My class consisted of one [count 'em -- one] kid who was not yet ready for confirmation class with the pastor. So during confirmation class, he and I would sit in my dining room and work on memory work, basic Bible stories, stuff like that. One night he exclaimed about something not-to-his-liking, "That sucks!"
My eyebrows went up. I gasped. "You will not talk like that around me and my children. You may apologize and not use that phrase any more while here!"
"What? What did I say?"
"You know what you said."
"But what's wrong with that?"
Kid kept claiming to not understand what the big deal was. He kept asking me to explain to him what the problem was. I thought he was being obnoxious. But now I wonder. Maybe he wasn't being intentionally provocative and ugly-mouthed. Maybe he just didn't know the origins of that phrase.
One day when I was in junior high, some high-school fellows drove by and mooned the PE class. A bunch of us were talking about it at lunch. When I said, "Yeah, he stuck his a** out the top of the car for everybody to see," gasps exploded around the table. "Susan said 'a**'! Can you believe that Susan said that?!" That's when I discovered that a** is not a substitute-word for hiney or tuschie or bottom. I didn't know. I used a word that I heard people using, and I knew what the word meant, but I didn't realize that it was considered naughty.
Many years later, I mentioned something about one of my daughters looking "hot" in a particular dress. I thought it meant "pretty" or "fantastic" or "especially dolled up." I didn't know that it had somewhat sleazy connotations until I saw the reaction of the people to whom I'd said it. Whoa. Botched it again. Major embarrassment!
So maybe my student that day really didn't know the implications of the word "sucks."
When something "stinks," there's a reason we use that word. If a potato or raw meat or a rotten egg "stinks," it is spoiled. It makes the atmosphere around it unpleasant. Thus, if a situation stinks, it is likewise bad and unpleasant.
I think a lot of young people don't have a clue where the word "sucks" came from in the 60s and 70s. They're so used to hearing the word as a synonym for "that stinks" or "that's awful" that they never stop to consider what the word is referring to.
Babies suck to eat.
Babies suck on their thumbs.
Bigger people suck on soda-pop straws or even the cap of their pen.
But can we please please please stop using the word "sucks" to describe things we don't like?
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Susan I took me about two years of hearing "sucks" before I didn't blush. I guess I finally became desensitized.
ReplyDeleteSuzanne, Looper
I'm in!
ReplyDeleteAt the center where I tutor I pretty regularly hear kids say, "Oh, cra*" to mean the same thing. In my book that's a vulgarity. We don't allow it in our house. But I think it has become generally accepted and I imagine these kids' parents are fine with them using it. I'm never quite sure what to do in that situation. If their parents allow it, who am I to forbid it?
I agree in general, especially since phrases like that tend to help us wallow in negative feelings and I am trying to limit that kind of vocabulary in myself and my kids.
ReplyDeleteThere is something to be said for the evolution of language in that if a word becomes used in a different way (as in "sucks" being synonymous with "stinks") that is what it means now. I can't go around saying " I'm knocked up" when I'm tired or sick in bed because that's not what it means anymore.
I do think it's good to limit negative language patterns, but if a word has lost it's crass connotations it's not as bad of a word as it used to be.
When I was young, I assumed the term came from the fairly innocent "go suck an egg" which was not a strange phrase to me, although I probably saw it more in books than I heard it in conversation. There is an iOS app targeted at kids where the main character can wear a "School Sucks" t-shirt, and I guess that Apple is okay with that.
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