Love is just a four letter word?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrZ0Ww7qXEA
Is it an endearment – or just another profanity do you think? When you hit your thumb with a hammer the natural tendency is to shock the world with spouted words of offence. There is a need to share the hurt, the pain. According to Marshal Lumsden “At no time is freedom of speech more precious”. I guess it is unlikely that you will respond with Oh Love!
However, the number of four letter profanities is many and out proportion the longer. Indeed I can think of few that are: two is my total at present! Is this because by their nature they need to be short, nasty and brutal?
I am, of course, taking into account words like FECK – which has found a loop-hole in the U yet it serves the same purpose. Its real meaning is effectiveness value or vigour. There have been other euphemisms which are feckless and fool no one: fark. freak, frick, fook and fug to name a few and these are just the F words! There could be just as many C words but I can’t be bothered to research them.
Any word that appears in a sentence without adding to the meaning is an expletive. It is there to add feeling. So what about the endearment ‘love’? If used as such, it is a useful word, like baby, duck and dear but what, when it is used with a tone that is sarcastic and derogatory, how do you think and feel about it then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA3ejdkS_v0&feature=related
5.2