This post contains a discussion of profanity and its censorship. As you can imagine, the post must contain profanity to advance the discussion. Sorry if that offends you.

So, a friend of mine on Twitter recently linked me to a post in Apple’s Support manuals entitled “How to prevent profanity from appearing in Dictionary”.

The obscene and filthy people at Oxford American Dictionary

As most OS X users know, Apple includes a wonderful program called “Dictionary.app” with every copy of OS X 10.4. This program lets you access an electronic copy of the Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus. There, you can find good definitions, etymologies, and pronunciations. You can even have it give pronunciation in the IPA if you tell it to do so in the application’s Preferences dialog.

The beautiful part of this is that it’s an entire dictionary. It may not be the full, unabridged version, but it’s very good for free software. You can find nearly any word you’d like in there, ranging from phone to phoneme to allophone. However, you can also find all sorts of profanity, defined in academic terms.

Take, for example, the treatment of one of the more vulgar words in the English language, “fuck”:

fuck |fək| vulgar slang verb [ trans. ]
1 have sexual intercourse with (someone). • [ intrans. ] (of two people) have sexual intercourse.
2 ruin or damage (something).
noun an act of sexual intercourse.
• [with adj. ] a sexual partner.
exclamation used alone or as a noun ( the fuck) or a verb in various phrases to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, or simply for emphasis.

(There’s much, much more about this fascinating word)

So, although it definitely contains the word and examples of the usage, one could hardly argue that it’s truly wanton and profanely using them.

Why censor the Dictionary?

Yes, the Dictionary app contains uses of profanity. However, these uses are all academic, and used in the context of describing the profanity itself. So, this raises the obvious question of why one would bother censoring the dictionary at all.

Perhaps a parent might be afraid that little Jimmy will learn those horrid, horrid terms. However, in order for little Jimmy to find them, he’d have to seach for them.

Once little Jimmy knows the terms well enough to search for them, chances are, his mind is already “corrupted” and he’s heard or seen the terms elsewhere. No matter how much fundamentalist parents desire to do so, you can’t make him unlearn what a word means, so there’s not a whole lot of point to keeping the largely academic discussion of the words away from him.

However, even if little Jimmy stumbles across a profane word online, perhaps it’s better that he looks it up immediately and gets the relatively tame information from the Dictionary App, rather than asking his third grade teacher what it means.

Either way, Profanity is a fact of life, and no matter how badly some people don’t want to hear it, it exists. Blocking objective, academic analysis of it won’t make the “problem” go away, and really, it’ll only make the word more tantalizing.

So, don’t censor the Dictionary Application. In the age of the Internet, little Jimmy will always be able to find out what a given word means, no matter how hard you try to censor him. Let Jimmy use the dictionary to find out what words mean in an educational sense.

Unless, of course, you’d prefer he just type “fucking” into a Google Image Search and start browsing. I didn’t think so…

I’ve recently developed a minor affinity for a blog named LifeHacker, which shares little tips, tricks, and hacks that you can apply to your computer, yourself, and your life in general. It’s a decent site, and definitely worth a look if you’re bored.

However, what caught my eye today was not the content, but an interaction in a comment thread on optimizing your Mac. As such threads tend to do on any forum, it rapidly devolved into “Yay! Macs rule!” “Eww! Macs suck!”.

Applied usage of the Typo Defense

To support the “Macs suck” side, one poster by the name of “Quikboy”, posted as follows:

I’ve used a MacBook Pro for 4 years. It’s not really anything special. At first it may seem cool, but after a while, it’s just ok. It starts seeming like the same old, same old. They’re pretty expensive too. I got a Sony Vaio during Christmas, and I’ve decided to use it for my personal use…

Now, this is fascinating, because, as “Jamie Phelps” points out in the thread, MacBook Pros first came out last April. There’s no possibility, even if he had prerelease hardware, that he could have owned a MacBook Pro for more than a year or two. I assumed that he made a simple mistake and confused “Powerbook”, Apple’s previous line of High-End laptops, with “MacBook Pro”. Had he left it alone, he might’ve seemed a bit out-of-touch or unfamiliar with his hardware, but not actively decietful.

However, “Quikboy” wouldn’t go quietly. He snapped back with this post, a variation on the ages old “typo defense”:

@Jamie Phelps:

Sorry, my ceiling light was dim. I was using the numpad, and pressed 4 instead of one. If you didn’t notice, 4 is right above one. I didn’t see that mistake and submitted the comment. Sorry. It has been out for almost a year at least as far as I remembered. I bought it somewhere in March or April of ‘06. Seems like a year to me.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean it’s well applied

To quote Abraham Lincoln, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”.If we believe his typo defense, then his intended post reads “I’ve used a MacBook Pro for 1 years.”

The problem here is that English marks plurality (the presence of more than one subject or object) in more than one place in a sentence. To change “I’ve used a MacBook Pro for 1 year”, we not only change the number, but we also add the plural morpheme (a chunk of sound that conveys a certain meaning) -s. In many cases, we’ll even mark a single object with an article rather than with a number (”had it for a year”).

So, even if he did, in fact, transpose the numbers due to a dim light on the keyboard, he also added an -s, and possibly even deleted an article. To me, it sounds like “Quikboy” got called on a lie, and didn’t have the sense to use a stronger defense (”Oh, I meant powerbook”). The Typo Defense failed him, but it doesn’t have to fail you.

Teh Pefrect Cirme

The Typo Defense is really limited in its applications. Here are some ground-rules.

You can only reliably argue one or two letters as a typo, not entire substitutions. You’d never get away with “You suck” “Huh?” “Oh, sorry, typo, I meant ‘You have nice hair’”.

Similarly, it’s more difficult to argue certain switches. “Quikboy” plays the “the keys are right next to each other” card well, but then fails because, as I pointed out, English grammar is sensitive to plural distinctions.

That brings us to the final rule, make sure that the sentence and sound structure doesn’t give it away. If you say “Wow, she’s quite got an a**”, you can’t go back and claim that you meant “She’s got quite a mass”. The a/an alternation will hang you.

When it works, though, the Typo Defense can be a valuable face-saving tool. Keep it in your “Oh no, what’d I just say?” toolbox right next to the Cat-on-the-keyboard Dodge and the “Oops, wrong window” absolution.

However, the best option might just be to come clean. The internet is resourceful and unforgiving, and some day, some linguist might highlight your post and dissect it, revealing the terrible truth. Wouldn’t that be creepy?

EDIT: Wow. Somebody just pointed out the Plurality error in the thread. See, there’s nowhere to hide…

Today, I’d like to highlight some interesting neologisms (new words, idioms and word uses) upon which I’ve stumbled recently.

Yard Sale — Noun, from Skier/Snowboarder parlance

This refers to a very bad fall when skiing, during which your skis, poles, hat, goggles and other accoutrement are ripped off of you and strewn about the snow. The origin doesn’t take a lot of imagination, it’s simply drawing a comparison between having all your gear spread out in the snow and spreading it out on your lawn for a yard sale.

“Then, I hit a mogul, and dude, it was a total yard sale”

BoBo — Noun, originally French, but imported

A contraction of “Bourgeois Bohême”, it refers to a yuppie (rich, young businessperson) who pretends to be a hippie and/or socially conscious through involvement with Eastern Religion/Decorating, Yoga, New Age beliefs, Fair-Trade Organic Shade-Grown Vegan Coffee, and conspicuous charity. There’s a level of inherent hypocrisy here, taking the Humvee to the “No blood for Oil” rally and paying $5000 for a luxury meditation retreat.

My city (Boulder, CO) is a true haven for these types. They’re attracted by the hippie reputation of the city, but also thrilled with the accessibility to modern conveniences and businesses. Perhaps the epitome of the BoBo mindset can be experienced by a quick visit to Now & Zen, a merchant which sells, I kid you not, “Zen Clocks and Timers”. Instead of a conventional tone, they knock against a Tibetan Singing Bowl. These are upwards of $100 each, and, last I checked, actual monks get up at sunrise, by natural means. However, if you’re a Bobo, what better way is there to express your spiritual consumerism than with a “tibetan phone bell”?

“Are Rob and Erma bringing little Samsara?” “Nah, they’re going to drop her off at the Meditation Center on their way to work over at Exxon.” “Ugh. They’re such BoBos”

Nascar — Noun, originating in the blogging community

“Nascar”, in the blogging context, refers to the sometimes endless list of social bookmarking site icons on the side or underneath blog posts. These are used by site authors to garner more clicks on social bookmarking sites (which help people to share interesting content and make things more well known online). See the below example:

The etymology (word origin) stems from the visual similarity of a blog like this to a NASCAR race car, which is generally plastered with many smaller advertisements.

“I’ve chosen not to put any Nascar on this site, but I don’t mean to pick on those who have. I just prefer the cleaner look.”

Toolgazing — Verb, origin unknown

This is a very colorful, humorous and poetic term for a very awkward situation. For those who might not share my Y Chromosome, American Men’s Restrooms usually have a wall with 2 or more urinals, all flush (no pun intended) with the wall, and often there are no dividers between these urinals, so men just line up side by side. “Toolgazing” refers to the act of a man glancing over at the exposed genitals of the other men urinating next to him. This is not looked upon nicely in the men’s restroom community, and those few who persist are very likely to enrage or offend the victim if caught.

“Fred’s kind of weird. One time I caught him toolgazing in the restroom at work”

Victory Lap — Noun, found among college students

A “victory lap” is the fifth year of classes taken to complete a four year degree program in college, and is often the result of a change in concentration or a school transfer. A person who is taking a victory lap is often called a “Super Senior”.

“Are you graduating this spring?” “Nah, I’m taking a victory lap, I have to take a Literature class”

Stall Call — Noun, origin unknown

A “stall call” refers to the act of placing or receiving a phone call while using the restroom. Some people are reluctant to make or take stall calls, but others seem to see no problem with the practice, even taking heroic measures to hide the associated sounds of flushing and sink usage.

“Who is Jim talking to in there?” “He’s making a Stall Call.” “Eww.”

That’s it for this episode of Neat Neology. If there are any you’d like to see featured here in the future, let me know. I hope you’ve learned some new words, and that you find interesting ways to work them into conversation. Then again, I hope you don’t have to use all of them…