There was an article in the Tribune about adults, in recent years, stripping away the euphemisms that we used to use for body parts and instead teaching kids the real names. I hadn't thought about this, but the the article talked about these words (like "vagina" or "scrotum")being "buried deep on forbidden texts" and children had to "excavate them and learn their meaning." The article asks, "Remember when you learned the real word for the body part lurking behind the euphemism? Wasn't it awesome, even exotic?"

What do you think? Do any of you remember "excavating" these words? Can't say that I do, but I do remember hearing the "f" word and asking my mother what it meant. She said it was one of the worst words we have and then changed the subject. I guess I can think of a few worse ones.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

It is generally understood that small boys, on opening a dictionary, will immediately look up "rude" words. Not having been one, I can't speak about little girls, but I suspect many will do the same.

It being many years since I was a small boy, I can't really remember "excavating" these words, but I am certain I did.

I don't remember searching for the words for body parts. I do remember searching for obscure naughty words so we could use them to insult the boys, though. I didn't think to look up dirty words in dictionaries until I was in college, though. How boring is THAT?

Oh . . .wait . . . I must have tried to look them up earlier than that because I had the certain knowledge that most of the dirty words weren't even IN the dictionary I had. It was in college that I met my friend, Andrea, who had a dictionary that had THOSE words included. Yay!

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
It is generally understood that small boys, on opening a dictionary, will immediately look up "rude" words. Not having been one, I can't speak about little girls, but I suspect many will do the same.

I'm a bit confused: Arnie, you were never a small boy? You are Athena's brother, and sprang from the thigh of Zeus full-grown?

"Forbidden fruit" always carries power; once it's commonplace the power wanes.

My mother, being a librarian, believed in teaching us the proper terms for all the body parts, including the "rude" ones, but we also learned that you didn't say those words in public. Now you can say those words right out loud in mixed company and only those of us above a certain age flinch even inwardly!

My excavations involved going to the paperback book rack in the back of the local pharmacy where many of us went after school for a soda. Several of us girls would sneak off to the back and take a copy of Peyton Place down and thumb through looking for the sex scenes! The owner of the store would come back and shoo us away. Of course our giggling gave us away. That's the about the only excavating I can remember.

Wordmatic

Wordmatic, you remind me of my ex-sister-in-law's term for coitus: Spelunking. Well, it IS a kinda cave-like and, to us men, something to be explored!

Quote: Well, it IS a kinda cave-like

Gives a whole new meaning to the song Clementine ...

In a cavern,
in a canyon,
Excavating ...

Right you are, and many an enterprising woman went west during the gold rush because she knew there'd be gold in them thar caves!

There used to be a saying, "The forty-niners were the miners/The fifties were the whores/ the fifty-ones were native sons!

Same tune, somewhat differently stated ...

The miners came in forty-nine,
The whores in fifty-one,
And when they got together
They produced the native son.

I don't know whether it's ever been done, but a treatise on the undoubted entrepreneurial skills of prostitutes over the millennia would be a fascinating read.

I did my spelunking in novels. I was a junkie fiction reader, & whenever I ran out of Oz/Nancy Drew/etc., I turned to the living room bookshelves. My mother was in a book-of-the-month club and there were always sure to be one or two racy tomes in with the better literature.