Mark Millican: The art of ‘dodging the curse’

Published 11:00 am Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Teresa advises me not to get too deep among the high weeds by going into word definitions and origins in a column, but it’s hard for an English major who has a bent toward etymology (the study of words).

Take, for instance (sorry, I can’t help it), the difference between the words “epitaph” and “epithet.” An epitaph is “a commemorative inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument about the person buried at that site, or a brief poem or other writing in praise of a deceased person,” according to dictionary.com. For epithet, I like the third definition offered by the website: “a word, phrase or expression used invectively as a term of abuse or contempt, to express hostility, etc.” Or cussin’, I might add.

Which brings us to what they referred to in Shakespeare’s day as “dodging the curse” in the use of language. In some of his plays the Bard avoided using a curse word by relying on an epithet instead.

For example, instead of exclaiming the vulgar “God’s wounds!” imprecation of his day, he shortened it to “Zounds!” in his writings, allowing his cussin’ character to dodge the curse of using God’s name in vain. (More commonly today, we might hear someone say “Geez!” instead of using the first name of Christ as a cuss word.)

We all have and use favorite exclamations to convey surprise, irritation, anger or whatever. When I hear my almost 8-year-old granddaughter Annabeth benignly saying “Oh, my goodness!” I instantly realize she is copying her mother. Annabeth’s mom, Amy, used to say “Cool beans!” when she was in high school — and I can’t get over that it’s been more than 20 years since she graduated. (That was cool beans back then, but oh my goodness to me now.)

Meanwhile, our two grandsons Elijah and Samuel are so cool they call each other “Bruh” instead of wasting time on the common two-syllable male sibling moniker. In that regard, their mom tells me, they use “sick” as an obverse adjective for “cool.” Kinda reminds one of the late Michael Jackson singing, “Oh, I’m bad!” when he actually meant “I’m good.” Oh, brother.

My wife has a knack for shortening groups of exclamations and putting them together, to wit: “Good gravy the whole world!” she might avow, or when she’s really surprised, “Good gravy the whole world that ever lived!” I love it when she says that.

Although our grandson Rocco up in Virginia has not developed a retinue of exclamation words, he has come up with a vocabulary all his own. As his mother Rebecca reports, he was sick recently and had diarrhea. The medicine he had to take was giving him “dust poop,” and when he had a fever it wasn’t the chills but the “chill outs” he was experiencing. Later, while the family was having a table-top discussion he was asked, “What makes a superhero?” Rocco’s response: “Electricity and sugar.” Just so! While his 1-year-old brother Augie is just getting around to pronouncing Mommy and Daddy, he’s obviously listening to older brother’s creative phraseology. Oh, brother, the words to come.

As for yours truly, my mildest vociferation in later years has been “Jiminy!” Fortunately, I haven’t yet been shocked enough to place “Cricket!” at the end (for those who totally do not get Walt Disney’s fictional character back in the day when the company had a soul, we’ll forgive your dearth of cultural history). Unfortunately, when harsher words do escape my lips that are not repeatable in a family newspaper I simply have to recant and repent and recite my old Sunday school lessons.

Too, words make me take flights of fancy at times. When Teresa and I were driving along after last week’s storm, we saw one of those colorful banners people sometimes use to adorn their porches or, in this case, the end of a driveway. The wind had really done a number on it, and it was forlornly wrapped and crumpled several times around its post.

So said I (paraphrasing), “Look at that banner, it’s battered. It’s tattered. It got scattered. But does it matter?” She groaned, and instead of saying “good gravy that ever lived” she remarked it was time for us to have lunch with her sister Debbie and her husband Michael, who also has a degree in English and is attracted to the well-phrased “bon mot,” as the French say for “good word.”

Well, the whole world’s gone crazy — what’s wrong with a couple of in-laws turning nutty for a little while? After all, it has been a few months since our wives have gotten together and rolled their eyes and groaned in unison at our repartee. And it strikes me now that at this late point we haven’t even gotten close to covering epitaphs.

Oh well, maybe another day.

One final bit of advice: Get out and make someone smile by sharing an appropriate “bon mot” today!