Tag: neologism

When you look up a word in a dictionary, you may see a qualification for that word, such as “slang”, “vulgar”, “archaic”, “colloquial”, and so forth. These labels are meant as a guide to proper usage; if what you wish to express requires a certain crudity (or even downright obscenity), then perhaps you’ll use that word, choosing it precisely because it is considered to be crude, obscene, vulgar. Webster’s Third International Dictionary, Unabridged made an attempt to eliminate these labels, because they felt that the labels were considered judgmental rather than descriptive. In so doing, Webster’s attempted to make all words free from judgment, in which case “The F Word” would no longer have any purpose in the English-speaking world. In order to save the sacred F-bomb, let’s talk about it for a bit. Continue reading “Words Require Labels”