5 Innocent Words That Need to Be Banned from English: Part 2
A little over a year ago, I wrote about word aversion, a phenomenon that occurs when the physical act of saying a word makes you uncomfortable. Not based on what the word represents, but based on how it feels in your mouth.
After that article ran, I scanned through the comments and found a few suggested additions from readers, scattered among spam advertising a dating website for giants and polite, well-articulated reminders that all of our commenters are much stronger than I am, and that my fear of words is most likely linked to how big of a pussy I must be, (a huge one, it turns out).
I decided to write a sequel to that article based on half of those comments. (The other half will be represented next week in "6 Ways That Daniel is a Vagina .")
Panties
I honestly never had a problem with this word until my last word aversion article ran. When it was published, sans-panties, I received a flood of emails and private messages all wondering why "panties" didn't make it on my list. So I sat around and said it out loud a few hundred times, and while I did realize that it's impossible to say it without sounding like either a child or a pedophile, (especially if you say it 100 times in an empty room), it never really bothered me as much as the words in the last list. But that doesn't mean it doesn't bother a crapload of other folks.
The panty-hate phenomenon is real; I'm just not part of it. That might be because I'm a man, (or, you know, a dude). Based on what I've read as well as independent research, women don't seem to like saying or hearing the word "panties," while men remain indifferent, perhaps because they become instantly distracted whenever they hear it, for some reason.
What it is:
Underwear for ladies and girls. Not much else I can say about it. If you didn't know what panties were, I'm really sorry that you had to learn it from me. Really sorry.
Use it in an Awful Sentence:
"Your sister and mother are at the mall, shopping for panties."
What it Actually Calls to Mind:
An irritating piece of slang that horrible people would use to describe someone who was acting prissy or cranky. Like, you know how the most annoying character in a sitcom set in an office always accuses someone who's pissed off as having "a case of the Mondays?" If you came to work very irritable, that same person would say "Ooh, call the doctor, it looks like Johnson over here has come down with a case of The Panties, heh heh. Hope it's not contagious, or else we'll have a panty-demic on our hands!"
I sure do hate you, Guy-I-Just-Invented.
Dollop
I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what exactly about this word bugs me. It's structurally very similar to "gallop," a word with which I have absolutely no qualms. There has to be some awful ingredient in the "dol" part, because every time I say this word now, I feel like I'm trying to swallow my own lips as punishment for giving the word access to the real world.
(The lips are the bouncers of the face, you see.)
What it is:
Dictionary.com defines it as a "shapeless mass or blob of something, esp. soft food," and that's certainly not doing the word any favors. As a rule, I try to avoid using words that could be used to define the amount of matter that a baby threw up.
Use it in an Awful Sentence:
"Doctor? I'm concerned, my 10-month-old just threw up about a dollup of egg yolk and orange pulp. Should I take him to the emergency room?"
No, just bury him and please never call me again, that fictional doctor should have said.
What it Actually Calls to Mind:
You know that loose bit of skin fat that dangles under the chins of old folks, (Not jowls, it's more central than that)? It's like a loose, wrinkly dewlap for old people?
That's a dollop.
Phlegm
I know that the production of phlegm is actually a good thing, that it means your body is trying to fight some kind of infection, but that doesn't make me feel better about it. The way I feel about phlegm protecting my body is the same way I'd feel if the weird, slimey, greasy guy at worked saved me from a burning building. Yes, thank you, I appreciate that, but in the future just... just let me die, I'd rather not be in debt to you.
What it is:
"A liquid secreted by the mucous membranes of mammalians," which is either the definition of phlegm or a list of allergies as written by my boner.
Use it in an Awful Sentence:
I can't come up with anything better than this sentence ripped from a website dedicating to understanding and removing phlegm:
"If the color of your phlegm is brown or gray, it may be your body is expelling tars or resins built up from smoking or inhaling large amounts of dust."
What it Actually Calls to Mind:
A supervillain made entirely out of globs of fat. Plus he's always wet and he stands way too close to you, and his special move is he puts his finger in your mouth and you hate it. And the heroes are all "Oh, crap, The Phlegm is at it again, he's down at the children's hospital and just ... just leaking everywhere, and bumming everyone out. He smells like a bag of butts that got peed on. Last time I fought him he kept trying to pinch my thighs. That's, fuck it, I'm just gonna kill him. Soon as I see him."
Ointment
I hate what saying this word does to a person's face. You have to scrunch up your nose, like you're smelling something bad, and the "oi" sound makes everyone sound like they're whining. Saying ointment just presents a much weaker version of You.
What it is:
At best, an ointment is a cream that you rub on parts of yourself to make them feel better and, at worst, "a homogeneous, viscous, semi-solid preparation, most commonly a greasy, thick oil with a high viscosity, that is intended for external application to the skin or mucous membranes."
"Mucous" sure is getting a whole lot of play today.
Use it in an Awful Sentence:
"As you can see, the patient's enflamed scrotum is pulsating irregularly; the best treatment is this viscous ointment that, oddly enough, I acquired by milking another one of my patients. Funny story, actually..."
What it Actually Calls to Mind:
Some kind of horrible growth, in my imagination. Like a giant wart, but angrier. A huge, throbbing goiter that grows out of your neck and ruins your good time. "What's that? Oh, that's just my ointment, it becomes engorged whenever I'm nervous. Please don't touch it, it shoots a lot of fairly pungent puss when it gets manipulated in anyway."
Rural
There's something about saying this word out loud that makes the speaker sound embarrassed. It's just the way your mouth has to work in order to say it, it's part-word and part-frog-impression. Your tongue has very little to do until the end, because most of the pronunciation of this word is handled by your lips, inner cheeks and...I guess, like, neck fat? Like you have to slightly tuck your chin in and vibrate and wobble your neck fat to properly say the word "rural." And the dual R's are just generally hard to handle, so everyone sounds unsure when they say it. It's a confidence dampener.
What it is:
Unlike most of the words on this list, this isn't a case where the definition is just as uncomfortable as phonetic design of the word; rural is completely tame. If something is rural, it just means that it's more country than city. Clean air, open fields, serenity, cows. That stuff.
Use it in an Awful Sentence:
"Can you please rub some ointment on the rural area of my body? I refer to my genitals as the rural area, because they're wild and overgrown, and full of bugs and stuff. And I would like you to rub ointment on it, with your hands."
What it Actually Calls to Mind:
If there was an animal that, when faced with danger, roared and then immediately shit itself and then trailed off and cut its own roar short out of embarrassment, "rural" would be the onomatopoetic way we'd represent the sound. Dogs woof, cats meow, and poop-badgers rural.
Daniel O'Brien is Cracked.com's Senior Writer (ladies), and the above picture is half of why "poop" is in his search history, (HR).
