ON SWEARING

Several people had things to say about swearing.

First Fred and then Dave Rogerson (and maybe a couple of others) reminded me that "bloody" actually came from "by Our Lady" (Dave hoping I wouldn't be offended by his mentioning it, which I'm not). Why this should have become any more than a mildly profane oath beats me. Maybe it had to do with the suppression of Catholicism in England, since the Protestants did not venerate the Virgin Mary so highly.

On the other hand, Mike Sykes suggested "by Our Lady" might have been a euphemism for "bloody":

... as you say, the origin of "by Our Lady" is somewhat dubious. But I'm convinced I've come across it somewhere, though I can't be sure it wasn't being used as a euphemism for 'bloody'. I had an idea it might be in full in Shakespeare, but I can't find it.* It doesn't obviously belong to the family of 'Zounds' ('God's Wounds'), 'Snails' either, does it?**

In his Dictionary of Slang ..., Eric Partridge has a sizeable entry which includes "There is no need of ingenious etymologies: the idea of blood suffices." He refers to a 2,000-word essay in his own book Words, but I don't have that, not can I identify it at amazon.com (or .co.uk for that matter).

You might meet it in all sorts of usages, such as abso-bloody-lutely (emphatic agreement), ha-bloody-ha (response to very weak joke), 'bloody well' as in "And always remember the longer you live, the sooner you'll bloody well die", from Lyrics, which is actually a very poignant Irish ballad. We once had a (vinyl) recording of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, acquired shortly before Xmas, which we played, with the children, after midnight mass. So that was a long time ago! Late 60s or early 70s, when I was still nominally Catholic.

Happy Xmas.

Notes: *A recent TV documentary on Shakespeare said that he may have retained his Catholic faith.

**I never heard that one before, but I suppose "Snails" would refer to "His Nails" (or God's or Christ's nails), ergo the crucifixion. I've heard "Ods Bodkins", meaning "God's Body".

Bill Roberts:

The late John Ciardi once opined that the shock language of Protestant cultures is obscenity, the shock language of Catholic cultures is blasphemy. (I think it was in one of his Browser's Dictionaries ~ if you don't have them, you especially should get them.) He noted that you can make almost anything a swear word in Italian by adding Madonna ~ "Porca madonna," the Virgin's pig. [Note: Bill swears he is Protestant.]

Jan Gregg, who still likes to swear once in a dirty little while (as Lorelei Lee of the original Gentlemen Prefer Blondes said about getting drunk), sent these links about dirty words:

Dirty Words

Dictionary definition of dirty dirty from Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary

She says she's mellowing out, though, and was listening to a Johnny Mathis Christmas album when she wrote, getting ready to bake cookies and trim the Christmas tree. Can't get more mellow than that.

THE CHRISTMAS TIMES HERALD

Overheard in a busy store, from an aged salesclerk coming to open another cash register: "They're backed up to East Jesus out there." My guess: she's from Kentucky.

I know the people who designed the "Just Say Merry Christmas" rubber bracelet, mentioned (without the source) in the current issue of Time. Various Scrooges have been saying that to wish someone "Merry Christmas" is to offend everyone who is not Christian. In the couple or three weeks since our neighbors dreamed this up, they've filled orders for many times the 20,000 mentioned in Time.

My one Muslim student, who has a Christmas tree, wished me a Merry Christmas. I met her Merry Christmas and raised her a Happy New Year.

'NUF SAID, NOT

A group, or something, calling itself "The World Can't Wait" published a full-page ad in The New York Times with a statement calling for people everywhere to make a lot of noise during President Bush's State of the Union address December 12, Monday night, to drown him out. Needless to say, it was to be symbolic since they wouldn't have been able to actually get inside the White House to do that, but I guess the idea was to keep anyone from hearing him on TV in public places.

Just so everyone knows I'm talking about a principle, not politics, keep in mind that I did not vote for Bush. I shouldn't have to say that in order to talk about a principle, but I know it's necessary, in order to avoid activating the Bush meme. But the fact that I did not vote for Bush really tells you little or nothing of my opinions on current issues.

It doesn't make sense to silence people you disagree with. It makes sense to keep track of what they're saying.

The people who signed this petition are saying that there is no room for discussion on the important issues. Or, 'Nuf said, to borrow that supremely irritating phrase. The simple principle is this: People are allowed to speak in this country, and that should go extra for our elected leaders. Trying to drown out the President, even symbolically, is the same as trying to muzzle every American citizen who voted for him, and that is wrong. TWCW wants to drive out this administration rather than wait for the next election. That's what some people tried to do to Clinton. That was wrong too. It's not the American way.

WIKIDPEDIA

It has come to my attention that Wikipedia, the online reader-written and edited encyclopedia, is not only not to be trusted as an authoritative source of information, but it has published false and slanderous information. So now we have Wikipedia Watch. Some of the Wikipedia entries appear quite scholarly, but how would I know without doing all the original research myself?

When I was a scholar, or at least a graduate student, I was taught that real research means going back as far as possible to original sources. For example, first editions of books, or even manuscripts, in literary research. And in genealogy, original documents, court records, letters, etc. That's not always possible, but obviously the further you get from original sources, the more diluted and liable to error your information will be. Even if 10 Web pages all have the same information, they may all be using bad sources themselves.

I don't have a solution for this problem, but I will try to avoid using Wikipedia.

Retreat: The Essence of Christian Mysticism

Bernadette Roberts

I am organizing a workshop with Bernadette Roberts, a remarkable Christian contemplative and author of three books:

The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center

The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey

What is Self? : A Study of the Spiritual Journey in Terms of Consciousness

This retreat, called The Essence of Christian Mysticism, will be held on the weekend of May 5-7, 2006, in Loveland, Ohio. For more information, go to Bernadette Roberts Retreat (www.keithops.us/brretreat.htm). NOTE: The web page has been changed to allow viewing with different kinds of browsers.

If you buy these or any other books from Amazon, using the link below, I'll get a tiny commission, and I'd appreciate it.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

NEED A WEB PAGE? NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries.

If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list.

Copyright Rhonda Keith 2005. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.