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From the AP obituary for Norman Mailer: "The book — noteworthy for Mailer's invention of the word "fug" as a substitute for the then-unacceptable four-letter original — was a best seller..."

Doesn't "then-unacceptable" imply "now-acceptable"? Because if so, why the fug won't the AP say what the word is?

It's frak, right?

Update. In the comments, abe asks, "Has there been a steady increase in what is acceptable to say in print? Or was there a time, perhaps hundreds of years ago, when words like 'fug' or its longer equivalent appeared in newspapers, etc.?"

I managed to dig up this amazing 1879 New York Times trend story [PDF] on the proliferation of "expletives in high and low life" (or, more precisely, on how a debate about said proliferation has taken over the letters pages of the London Telegraph -- in case you thought the "we're not writing about this distasteful story, we're just writing about how other people are writing about it" gimmick is a recent one). In it, the Times writer observes that,

In my boyish days filthy epithets were much more common than they are now, and a century ago the newspapers printed words which are considered indecent now even in a whisper. I have in my posession a Berrow's Worcestor Journal of a century and a half back, in which a bestial crime was described, in large letters, in a word now ony used by the filthiest and most profane swearer.

Sadly, the goatfucker leaves us to guess what that word might be. This article is a treat from top to bottom, so I won't spoil any more here, except to note that it includes a delightful example of how to describe an offensive word without actually using it: "I cannot mention the revolting originals for whose hideous adjectival force a compromise is offered in 'sanguinary,' 'bleeding,' or 'blooming.'"

[Previously]

Posted by Daniel Radosh

12:23 PM