Jesse S. et al. v. Antonin S. et al. on fleeting expletives

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Mon May 4 07:26:15 UTC 2009


On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:00 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> At 5/3/2009 10:41 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/opinion/03freedman.html
>
> I am amused that Adam Freedman writes "That the justices managed to
> do this without actually uttering either of the words at issue ..."
> -- but manages himself to evade even an initialism by writing "Jesse
> Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and the
> author of a book on swearing ..."!

The Associated Press ran a poll a few years ago about profanity, and
the accompanying article included this line: "For the record, we
needed special dispensation from our bosses just to say 'F-word.'"

See:  http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002979.html


--Ben Zimmer

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