AN ADMONITION

Sheik Abu Bakr ibn Beck al Beaumonti

Urges verbal restraint

On the effective use of the F bomb:

The word “fuck” can be used as a verb, a noun, and a simple expletive.  As “fucking” it is an adjective, and as “fucked” it can be used as an adverb.  It is a most versatile word, and one that once had a most important use – it allowed a person to convey that he or she was very unusually disturbed about something.  Now, alas, it has become mere throw-away verbiage.  As a daughter wrote recently, we need a stronger word, now that you-know-who is in charge.

I have seen several recent Facebook postings that exemplify the over use and cheapening of the F word.  One utilized the phrase “fucking shit-ass” four or five times in a half-dozen lines.  Another described conditions as being “fucked” at least five or six times, in a short posting.  I seldom resort to “social media” that I do not encounter our F…ing friend.  That’s sad.

Why is it sad?  Well, for one thing, it allows the user to avoid valuable mental exercise.  Instead of inveighing against "fucking shit-ass" weather, why not simply describe it as "atrocious"?  Rather than declaring that with Donald Trump as president, we are fucked, try “we are in serious difficulty.”  This sort of thing would allow humanity to save the F-bomb for truly unusual circumstances.  Then it would be a real bomb, and not a pathetic fizzling fire-cracker.  I like the F word, and I want it to mean something once again.

Yeah, I know: you are thinking that I am an old man, with speech patterns stuck in the 1950s.  That is true.  But it also is true that later on I was known as nearly the most profane man in geology, second only to Bob Butler.  Butler later became my field partner.  We resorted to lots of colorful phraseology – and saved the F word for when the tent leaked.