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Question:
"In the news, I've come across the phrase "expletive deleted" quite a few times recently. Example: '[expletives deleted], Jack, I know how to run my office.' It's from the conversation between a state governor in the United States and another public office holder. The Longman dictionary defines "expletive" as a rude word you use when you're angry or in pain, such as damn. I don't quite get it. Please explain."
Answer:
I'm essentially asked to speak the unspeakable here, a tough task if not an altogether impossible one.
I'll take the task because, simply put, it's important. One can not expect to be street-smart with the English language without knowing all the bad words in it - I'm serious, you should watch the deadpan look on my face as I type out these.
At the very least, you won't be able to understand a Hollywood movie properly if you don't have at least a few of the most "popular" dirty words under your belt.
The same is true with the Chinese language, of course. No lingual chauvinism here - I find the best Chinese-speaking foreigners in Beijing to be invariably the same ones who cuss best in the Chinese tongue.
But first things first, let's look at some definitions.
As pointed out by the Longman dictionary, "Expletive deleted" is an ironic expression which indicates that a scatological (look this one up, please) word has been omitted. Omitted because they are deemed too offensive to readers if printed in black and white.
The afore-mentioned "damn" is one such word, which is euphemistically called a four-letter word as many swear words consist of four letters. But "damn" is apparently not a best example of four-letter words as it is still permissible in print, God forbid.
Any way, a better example would be, er, the very first word uttered in the comedy movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. Incidentally, it's also second word uttered in the same movie, this time by the hero played by Hugh Grant.
We all of us, hypocrites excluded, have perhaps cursed someone at one time or another. More often we've probably uttered a bad word out of anger, frustration rather than to be rude. Still more often, we have heard someone else utter it. Jonathan Margolis wrote in the Guardian (November 21, 2002):
"The first time I heard the word f---, I was seven. My 12-year-old brother asked me if I wanted to know the worst word in the world. He whispered it to me and, although he wasn't quite sure what it meant, we both loved the idea of a word so rude that it could barely be uttered."
Very well said indeed. The forbidden is, just as much, a fact of life.
Nonetheless, four-letter words are prevented from print to preserve social decorum. What hypocrites we are, I hear you say. Yes, I agree. We are all hypocrites in this matter.
Still, four-letter words are considered too offensive for print. So the media began to try to circumvent it by using slashes, as the Guardian article does with the F-word (f---), or by taking out the vowel (f-ck), or simply taking the whole word out, replacing it with the commonplace [expletive deleted].
US newspapers are said to have popularized the practice during the Watergate scandal involving former President Richard Nixon. When transcripts of his internal tapes were made public - you guessed it, they found the transcripts laced with foul words, aside from the more serious evidences of political wrongdoing.
Nixon's political crimes had been duly done and dealt with and therefore merit no further attention here. We'll look further instead at the expletives deleted. Nixon, though, is not the only president to have shocked the public ear with taboo words. Not by any means.
In one of the better known gaffes from the man currently in the White House, George Bush, during the 2000 election campaign thought he was off the microphone when he spotted a reporter he loathed to see in the crowd.
Just before he was to deliver a public address, Bush whispered to his vice presidential running mate, Dick Cheney, "There's Adam Clymer, major league [expletive deleted] from The New York Times."
Cheney, not knowing either that the mike was on, concurred, "Oh, yeah, big time."
I'll tell you this much: Major League baseball is the top league of the sport in the United States. To say someone is major league something is therefore to say he's that something of the first order. "Big time" means the same thing, as in, "Chinese standup comedian, cross-talker Guo Degang has succeeded big time, recently appearing on CCTV and Phoenix TV in Hong Kong."
As for Bush's expletive, it's a 7-letter word beginning with an "a", that's all I'll own up. You'll have to look it up in the dictionary yourself, if you haven't guessed it by now.
Sometimes, newspapers do publish four-letter words in full.
In 2004, for example, the Washington Post did just that. In the following article (June 26, 2004), Post staff writer Howard Kurtz explained the decision:
The New York Times said Vice President Cheney had used "an obscenity" against Senator Patrick Leahy. The Los Angeles Times had Cheney saying "Go . . . yourself." CNN said Cheney used "the F-word."
But The Washington Post printed the word yesterday for the first time since publishing the Kenneth Starr report in 1998. And that set the town buzzing.
"When the vice president of the United States says it to a senator in the way in which he said it on the Senate floor," says Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "readers need to judge for themselves what the word is because we don't play games at The Washington Post and use dashes."
Well, that's up to the Post.
For this column, I just hope the topic never comes up again.
I'll encourage you to keep acquiring them, though, even words that might make a sailor blush, because:
1. Four-letter words are an integral part of the English language.
2. They are a fact of life - without them, you won't be able to survive, be it in a common street, or the highest public office.
Not to mention coming to grips with Hollywood movies.
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