While helping someone fix something today I uttered “whomever put this together kind of screwed it up”.
Which resulted in a mini lecture that I might as well have used the “F” word in front of their children [who were in another room] as the word screw is just an euphemism for it.
:rolleyes: Um, yes, sometimes it is. But not in the manner I used it in.
*31.screw up, Slang.
a.to ruin through bungling or stupidity: Somehow the engineers screwed up the entire construction project.
b.to make a botch of something; blunder.
*
Slang, yes. But not vulgar.
So, was this person being stupid and over sensitive, looking for something to be offended by (by the person who was helping them out:mad: ) or am I out of touch with modern mores?
Perhaps leaving the job undone and telling them to find someone with a more refined vocabulary to do it was a bit extreme on my part, but it sure was FUCKING satisfying!
Screw is a euphemism for fuck for most usage. Screwed up = fucked up. Neither word means a sex act in that usage. I cannot think of a slang usage of screw where you could not use fuck for the same meaning.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad to say. I mean, after all, that’s what euphemisms are for!
Actually, we’re not really talking about euphemisms here - fucked up is the precise opposite of a euphemism, in fact. You’re not using ‘screwed up’ to keep the kiddies from hearing you say ‘messed up’ (the horror!), after all. Whether or not it’s vulgar is entirely based on how people understand it - I’d wager that most people would regard it as related to, but less severe than, ‘fucked up’, and therefore at least technically vulgar. To paraphrase CookingWithGas, though, that’s what a euphemism is
Lots of words are inappropriate for kids to hear that are silly and mundane to adults. For example, I wouldn’t use heck or crap around a small child. The general rule, I think, is if I wouldn’t want the kid to repeat it, I shouldn’t say it.
Should the lady in the OP have assumed you’d find ‘screw’ vulgar? No. She should have said “Hey, I don’t want my kids hearing that. Please don’t say screw.”
Hrm. Probably better for this thread in Great Debates or IMHO. Anyway …
I once said that the setup at work had left us totally “boned.” Other members of the group jokingly pointed out I should be brought up on sexual harassment with human resources. I retorted that, “Boner” was the nickname of Mike Ceaver’s friend on “Growing Pains”, and as a prime time TV show from two decades past, I had “sufficient support and citation” for it to have neutral, colloquial use. Meh. YMMV, but if you can find a prime time, or better yet children’s Disney channel show with that usage, maybe you have … well, … a productive start to a friendly argument, on the topic.
Years ago, during the TV series titled “Uncle Buck”, based, in a very lame TV neutered way, on the movie, there was controversy that the child star used the term “sucks.” Keven Meany made the point that the term is now neutral – everyone, even kids, says “sucks” without sexual overtones. So there, again, rises the debatable point, if it’s on TV, it’s not obscene.
Those didn’t hear a mother screwing thing. They were in another room and I wasn’t shouting, I barely mumbled it.
I’ll think more about this the next time I’m fucking a light bulb into a socket. Unfortunately the lamp is broken and I need a Phillips fuck driver to fix it.
Sounds like this person had something large lodged inside their ass. Considering their kids can hear much worse words on any television channel and have undoubtedly heard much worse already, you should have told them to go relax and perhaps enjoy a nice fuckdriver or other equivalent cocktail (since they’re so interchangable right?). Regardless of the word’s meaning back in the 1600s, it’s as harmless as a word gets nowadays in my opinion.
Quite correct. You should say “Please hand me the fucking helical fastener.”
Also, I wouldn’t say “crap” because it is an ugly word used by people who want to use a real-deal obscenity but don’t have the balls to do so. “Shit” is always preferred. Or, if the situation doesn’t require that degree of vulgarity, then don’t use one at all, not the junior high school excrescence that is “crap.”
Her goats didn’t even hear it. I was in the middle of doing this mother dog a favor and she starts being a rooster inhaler. And not the good kind of rooster inhaler.
I was surprised to hear Bart Simpson observing, about some bad situation, “This both sucks and blows.” Great line, but I’m surprised it passed muster at the network.
You’d think so, maybe, but I was once babysitting a kid (I think he was around 8 or 9 at the time), and used the word “jerk” in front of him and his mother. He had never heard that usage of the word before (he did know it as a sharp tug or pull), and I had to explain to him what it meant. I don’t think that his mom was too upset, given that that was the worst word I ever used in his presence, but clearly she’d been doing a pretty good job of keeping him sheltered.
