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Four-Letter Words

Preface

I have always had a thing for four-letter words. And I don’t mean those words of obscene toilet speech that are certain to offend the ear of most of the general public. I mean those good, old, Anglo-Saxon words for which we often substitute longer, more educated-sounding words of Latin or Greek origin. I blame that practice on the class system, one that remains prevalent to this day in England. The upper crust does not want to be mistaken for those of the working class, those who use “crude” language, indicating that they do not belong to the class who “are of the manor born”, that is, those who have had the benefits of a refined education.

You may have some wrong ideas about four-letter words. Then look here: “Whoa, dude, slow down, take your time! Heed this, y’all: just fill that last deep hole with some dirt; gray sand, also some dark, rich clay soil; both kind.”

Just for fun, I have written sentences composed entirely of four-letter words, without a single cuss word, and without appearing crude, or lacking in education.

Apology

Never have I written on a subject for which I felt less-qualified. Although my engineering creds as an aerospace structural analyst and designer may be extensive, I am the product of an educational system that neglected the liberal arts, and has only recently moved to correct that error. I am and will always be a Skuleman, an engineer from an era when engineers took pride in their misspellings. Luckily, I can be thankful for the what little dose of liberal arts education that I did receive in Secondary School, a grounding in English Literature and Composition. The Province of Ontario, responsible for the content of all public education within its domain, has always set high standards. When I was in tenth grade, I was obligated to read Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and other poets laureate, and to memorize long passages of epic poems. I wrote many compositions, including one that relied entirely on the abundant use of jargon. I kept notes on my reading to expand my vocabulary

Churchill once famously said, “A man cannot consider himself to be well-educated unless he has studied Latin or Greek.” I have studied neither.

Vulgar Language

“Vulgar” is an adjective with several shades of meaning: lacking sophistication or good taste; coarse, rude; characteristic of belong to the masses. In arithmetic, we define a vulgar fraction as one in which the numerator and denominator are separated by a line, e.g., ½. I suppose we consider decimal fractions as more refined, more sophisticated.

I enjoy the humor of George Carlin. He uses humor and inconsistencies in our use of words to attack some of our most respected institutions, such as religion, the airline industry, and our government, for the ways in which they distort the meaning of common words we use every day. One of his stand-up comedy acts is about taboos, titled “Seven words they won’t let me use on TV”. Although I appreciate his humor, I don’t agree with his ideas of free speech to justify the use of vulgarities. The Oxford Dictionary still includes many of those dirty, offensive four-letter Anglo-Saxon words common to toiletry and sexual activity. I never use them in my speech or writing. (Well, hardly ever.) Consistent with those rules, however, I would not shy away from using non-Anglo-Saxon terms like, “urinate, defecate, or fornicate,” should they be appropriate to the context. I can sympathize with Cole Porter, a talented wordsmith in his own right, who noted the trend in his own time period of the 1930s:

“Writers who once new better words,

Now use only four-letter words,

Writing prose,

Anything goes.”

My Advice

What I would like to see writing, in which there is action, that has more frequent use of those pithy four-letter action verbs, often onomatopoeic, like: bump, stab, sock, bash, kick, bite, bang, tear, bomb, whip, fist, bonk, lash, lick, mash, poke, rape, gash, rake, slam, slap, knee, prod, and hurt; when they can be more effective. Regrettably, most of the examples I have given are nasty actions, suggesting violence; nevertheless, they are more direct, more expressive, and more colorful than their multi-syllable equivalents. Or you may use the device common to cartoonists, to substitute the obscene word with a string of four symbols, as I have done in my title. I would also like to see more use of other onomatopoeic four-letter words such as drip, drop, ding, dong, tick, tock, buzz, beep, snap, thud, honk, and poof; words that are non-violent.

I hope that I have made the point, that you should not overlook the opportunity to substitute a four-letter word if it fits. It seems to me, that the rough, Anglo-Saxon, four-letter words, being more graphic, more punchy, evoke a more emotional reaction. When used, some folk will feel more hurt, feel that they have more pain, more “ouch”. (There, I did it again; I used a string of 16 four-letter words in a row, and you probably didn’t even notice.)

A good four-letter word does have to express violence. Here are some non-violent, four-letter action words , in groupings you might recognize:

Hook shot, flop, slam dunk; Play, snap, buck, pass, toss, flag, kick, punt, boot, roll, spin, snag; Race, trot, jump, leap; Bunt, walk; Yell, root, clap, razz, mock, zing, bait, wave, sing; Feed, suck, peck, lick, bite, wolf, gulp, fork, chew, chug, burp, spit, barf; Love, wish, care, date, buss, kiss, lust, mate, keep; Lose, quit, hate; Snip, curl, comb, part, knot, bind; Shop, ship, pack, bind, tape; Walk, hike, trot, bike, honk, ride, pull, push; Swim, surf, sail, fish, hook, bait, dock; Chop, maul, adze, dust, nail, chip, rasp, hack; Hunt, fish, lure, load; tame, whip, plow, rake, tend, slop; Soar, peck, claw, nest, flap; Garb, lace, tack, fold, darn, knit; Talk, crab, moan, weep, blab, mock, chat, sigh, lisp, lilt, hush, crow, gasp, rasp, tout, shoo, huff, hush; Meow, purr, bark, buzz, roar, howl, yowl, yelp, bray, hiss;

You see, there are plenty of good active, four-letter verbs from which to choose.

I once took a class in Creative Writing that included as an assignment, an exercise in the selection of adjectives and adverbs, to show how effective they can be in writing with more clarity and precision. I learned that by writing a paragraph with no adjectives or adverbs, the results tend to sound dry and colorless. Similarly, to add color or impact to your writing, see if one of those blunt, often-neglected four-letter words are a better fit in your sentence, and then give them a try.

Here are some handy, four-letter adjectives and adverbs:

Huge, tiny, long, puny, tall, dumb, easy, hard, cold , damp, racy, only, rare, dear, high, tart, acid, dark, pale, blue, rank, fair, rich, poor, best, last, fast, slow, just.

Not very exciting, but they help to clarify.

Vocabulary

I continue to expand my vocabulary by reading. From books about the Napoleonic era, of the days of Nelson’s fleet of “wood ships and iron men”, I learned to “worm, parcel, and serve a hawser”. I became fascinated by nautical terms, including usage of some four-letter words that was uniquely nautical, like vang, jeer, cant, coak, clew, bitt, bibb, bunt, boom, mast, poop, and yard. In the aircraft industry, we continue to use nautical terms like waterline, rudder, bulkhead, stringer, and fairlead. Some of the four-letter nautical terms, such as sail, loft, ship, spar, roll, prop, and hull, are word that are commonly applied to aircraft as well.

Following My Own Advice

Let’s just see how my advocacy of four-letter words might really look like in practice. If I had been a sportswriter, long one of my fantasies, I might have submitted a column as follows:

“As the conclusion of the contest approached, with the opportunity for just one more scrimmage, the situation was obvious. With his team behind in the score by five points, Favre, in order to snatch a win, and have his team emerge victorious, had time for just one more play and needed to score a touchdown. The seasoned quarterback chose a ‘spinner’; a play in which he would receive a direct snap, retreat while extending his arm as if there was going to be a direct plunge off center by the fullback; but instead, he would continue to rotate, then quickly rifle an aerial to his split halfback, who had dashed downfield, headed directly for the opponent’s uprights. In actual execution, the receiver snagged the pigskin in the red zone, executed a few deceptive zig-zag movements to avoid the grasp of the defensive safety, and lurched forward to paydirt, scoring a touchdown. Unnoticed, his running mate, meanwhile, was horse-collared. The entire stadium erupted.”

There we have it. A report that is not related to nasty mayhem, but is written with some of the familiar jargon and patois for which sportswriters are famous. The offering probably illustrates conclusively why I would never have succeeded in that profession. Now let’s see what the text might have looked like, describing the same event, but with intentional, forced selection of four-letter words:

“As time ran down, all knew that there was only time left in the game, with the home team facing a five-point deficit, for Bret to pull off just one play, a game-winning play. His call was a spin play, a neat ploy in which he would fake a buck to the left side of the line, then turn and make an easy toss to a back who had been set wide, and was running a post pattern. As played out, the back, was able to snag the pass at the five-yard line, juke left near the grid side line marker, to slip by the lone Lion back, and fall, so as to land with the ball just over the line, into the end zone. Away from the play, a yank on the shoulder pads took down his running mate. The fans went wild. Amid cheers, they began to yell, to bait the refs, to zing them for the miss of the hold call on the last play, even when the lack of a flag did not alter the game outcome. Then they started a wave, and sang the team song.”

Whoa! That is over 50 four -letter words in just one paragraph, text that does not portray violence and without a single cuss word! An improvement? Perhaps my four-letter word advice can be carried too far!

Concluding Remark

My advice is that, in your writing, you should not overlook the possibility of using a simple four-letter word in place of the polysyllabic. You may find that it is more clear, more concise, provides more punch, and provokes more emotional response than the word you may first chosen., dark You may benefit by referring to a thesaurus before settling on the appropriate word.