new rude word

[Eoin C. Bairéad]

Hi

part of my job is to maintain the list of unacceptable language for
our eMail system. They're accountants, and such words are
inappropriate (although for how long more I don't know!) in messages.

I recently added a new rude word. It's "clunge", and is a noun exactly
synonymous with the "top of the list" word beginning with c, ending
with t, and with nu in reverse order in the middle. A word which, if I
spell it, gets kicked out by about 80% of mail filters.

Its genesis is interesting. British TV, fast succeeding in its efforts
to scale the cultural heights already achieved in the US, has come up
with the formula of a comedy series based on obnoxious young people in
a specific location in the UK, for example Essex, or Sheffield, or
London. It is clear that local dialect is still strong in England, and
the slang of the area chosen - in this case the area of West Sussex
centered on the town of Littlehampton, is used extensively.

And their local term for the vagina is, apparently, the aforesaid "clunge".

Just to avoid misunderstanding, those who know the word can find it as
deeply offensive as any of its synonyms, and, used aggressively to
young women, it can be most hurtful - it is a 100% real obscenity.

What, of course, is interesting, is that none of the rude word censors
I have come across actually list it. I think I'm the first. And most
people over about 25 don't understand it.

So how can a word be really rude if only a small percentage of the
population know it's really rude?

Dunno?

Eoin

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Eoin C. Bairéad
Dublin, Ireland
Áth Cliath, Éire

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org