By Tony Deyal
The term “four-letter word” serves as euphemisms for words that are considered profane or offensive. A “four letter word” is a short word that people consider to be rude or offensive, usually because it refers to sex or other private bodily functions. In almost all the Caribbean countries, we refer to is as a “bad word” (or in Trinidad “bad wud”).
Despite the attempt to ease up on the “cussing” and “profanity,” the fact is that everywhere in the world there are swear words, expletives, and blasphemous language. While there are “A” words, “B” words and others right down to “Z”, the “biggie” and the “bardy” is the “F.” When I asked a friend at school in Jamaica why this is so, he told me flatly, “Go and F (find out) for yourself.”
Fortunately, even the “F” words in the 26 letters are not linked to bad words only. In fact, there are 149,165 known four-letter words in the English language and almost all of them are cosmopolitan and do not “curse”, or “cuss”, police threatening to lock them up. Fortunately, there are powerful words with four letters like “care,” “grow,” “kind,” “safe,” “heal,” and “hope.” There are holy words like “love” and “pray.” There are words for kids and these include “life,” “fear,” “time,” “work,” “game,” “play,” “song,” “wind,” “rain,” “heat,” and most of all, “food.” But for the parents and older people who work their “buts” off, meaning no excuses for not doing their jobs totally and properly, there are “can’t,” “quit,” “lose,” “envy,” and “hate.” These are words meant to crush the potential of employees and quash their attempts to innovate.
In discussing what happens to people in such a terrible situation, one expert explained that those owners or bosses have the power and some say, stupidity, to transform their own organisation into a dark and desolate place. Among these, the word “hate” is the worst of the four-letters. While we all say things like, “I hate chicken gizzards!” or “I hate having to be locked inside the house when rain falling,” it is when we go after people that the situation becomes ferocious and frightening. Saying angrily, “I hate Bill” or “Mom beat me.
I hate her! I hate her!” is what becomes corrosive. This is where the four-letter word “hope” comes in like, “I hope I get a bonus,” “I hope you feel better,” or as the poet Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” In fact, there is another set of four-letter words that one manager tried to get his staff to use ten times more than the hate and envy. They are simple but effective – “care,” “grow,” “kind,” “safe,” “heal,” and most of all, “hope.”
There is a story about four-letter words that ladies, especially, should excuse. A young couple got married and went on their honeymoon. When they got back, the bride immediately phoned her mother. “Well,” said her mother, “How was the honeymoon?” “Oh Mama,” she replied, “The honeymoon was wonderful, so romantic…” Then suddenly she burst out crying, “But mama, as soon as we returned, Barry started using the most horrible language, things I’d never heard before.
I mean all these awful four-letter words! You’ve got to take me home… PLEASE MAMA!” “Sarah,” her mother said, “Calm down! You need to stay with your husband and work this out. Now tell me, what could be so awful? WHAT four letter words?” “Please don’t make me tell you Mama,” wept the daughter, “I’m so embarrassed, they’re just too awful. COME GET ME PLEASE!” “Darling! Baby! You must tell me what has upset you so much. Tell your mother these horrible four-letter words!” Sobbing the bride said, “Oh Mama, he used words like dust, wash, iron, cook…” “I’ll pick you up in 20 minutes,” replied the mother.
Fortunately, there are more ways to skin the cat than a four-letter word. For example, “What’s a four-letter word describing a female that ends in “-unt”? Aunt. “What’s a four-letter word ending with “K” that means intercourse?” Talk. What has four letters, sometimes has nine letters, and occasionally has twelve letters? The mailman.
Obviously, we cannot go for men only. Here is one for the ladies. “What word in the English language does the following: the first two letters signify a male, the first three letters signify a female, the first four letters signify a great, while the entire world signifies a great woman.” What is the word? Heroine. Here’s a toughie. “What has four letters, sometimes nine letters but never has five letters?” Give up? “What” has 4 letters; “Sometimes” has 9 letters; and “Never” has five letters.
In trying to see how other people, parents especially, deal with the four-letter language, I read about one family that did not tolerate only four specific four-letter words in their house. The first three were “Don’t,” “Won’t” and “Can’t.” The fourth and what they considered the absolute worst of all, was “Quit.” One teacher friend pointed out that the “F”-word was not so effing bad after all because other words included “fade,” “fads,” “fain,” “fare,” even “fags,” and that was a “fact.” I replied, “Shut your FACE. You are too FAHS.”
One of my friends who likes to respond to my jokes with his own, saw me and asked, “Hey Tony. Boy, I was in a bar drinking beer with friends and I almost fainted. The past, the present and the future walked in. But it was tense.” Another one of my friends said very loudly, “Tony, I know what you’re saying but SEX is not a four-letter word.” I replied, “But SEXY is!”
At this point, my friends wanted to know how, as a writer, I knew the difference between the clean and the dirty four-letter words that I use. So, I shared the “Old School Turtle Test” with them. There are four questions meant to test us. The first is, “What does a man do while standing up, a woman sitting down, and a dog on three legs?” The answer, “Shake hands!”
The second is tougher, “What is called when two consenting adults have intercourse? The answer has four letters and ends in ‘k’.” Talk. Then the third about men, “What does a man have that’s round and hard and sticks so far out of his pyjamas that you can hang a hat on it?” His head. And the final one for make or break, “What does a woman have two of, and a cow has four of?” If you think it is something other than “legs,” better go to the church and pray.
*Tony Deyal will join you in the church. He was asked, “What four-letter word starts with ‘F’ and ends in ‘K’?” After a long time thinking, suggesting responses that were not accepted, and then begging for the answer, he found out it was a fork.
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