Tarnation

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Dr. Goodword
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Tarnation

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sat Jul 08, 2017 10:17 pm

• tarnation •

Pronunciation: tah(r)-nay-shên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Interjection, Mass Noun

Meaning: 1. [Interjection] An exclamation of annoyance. 2. The act of condemning or the state of being condemned.

Notes: Because of its oblique origin (see History), this word has no relatives. The fact that it is most often used as an expletive contributes to this fact since expletives generally are lexical loners.

In Play: Because it was a favorite word of several of my aunts as I was growing up down South, I never really gave much thought to this word. Back when physical discipline was considered virtuous (spare the rod, spoil the child), most southern country boys had the tarnation beaten out of them on a fairly regular basis. (Maybe that is why we are forgetting the word.) I am sure if those gracious ladies who aunted my rise to adulthood had been aware of its origin, they would never have said anything like, "What in tarnation were you thinking when you put your red shirt in the washing machine with my white linen?!" Or, "Tarnation, son, you don't have the sense God gave a goat!"

Word History: Today's Good Word is a mostly home-grown word, though its life did begin in Rome. It started out as the Latinate damnation, which did not sit well with our frontier foremothers. So, about the time damn shifted to darn, damnation went to darnation. From darnation to tarnation was no more than switching a wiggle for a puff of air. The difference between [d] and [t] in English is that we vibrate our vocal cords to pronounce [d] but not for [t] and we puff our [t]s but not our [d]s. (Don't believe it? Put your fingers about 1 inch from your mouth and say, to, then, do, a couple of times.)
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Pattie
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Re: Tarnation

Postby Pattie » Sun Jul 09, 2017 8:10 pm

Thanks for the verb 'to aunt', Dr G. I've been doing it since I was six years old and now do a bit of great-aunting as well.
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LukeJavan8
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Re: Tarnation

Postby LukeJavan8 » Mon Jul 10, 2017 1:22 pm

The actress Kathy Bates does a lot of tarnation with
a belt in the movie "A Home of our Own". Only after
getting beaten by a boyfriend and returning home
does she tell her oldest: "getting beaten not only
hurts on the outside, but on the inside as well".
The boy played by Edward Furlong says "I Know".
She realizes she has been beating him and feels
his hurt. The whole household is awaken later with
a pounding sound, only to realize it is mom nailing
"your father's belt" to a tree. A very moving scene
played by two terrific actors.
-----please, draw me a sheep-----

misterdoe
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Re: Tarnation

Postby misterdoe » Mon Jul 10, 2017 11:04 pm

So I guess I've been uncleing for twenty-eight years? Or is it uncling? I think I like it better with the "e"; without, it looks like "un-cling." :)

Philip Hudson
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Re: Tarnation

Postby Philip Hudson » Wed Jul 12, 2017 11:35 pm

Tarnation was one of the near swear words of my childhood. Even remotely nearly swear words were verboten in the Hudson household. This obtains until today and will, I hope, continues as long as the world stands.
It is dark at night, but the Sun will come up and then we can see.

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call_copse
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Re: Tarnation

Postby call_copse » Fri Jul 14, 2017 7:23 am

Swearing is a sign of good breeding, articulacy, intelligence and a broad vocabulary. Science says so!

https://www.sciencealert.com/swearing-i ... scientists

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... uper-smart
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George Kovac
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Re: Tarnation

Postby George Kovac » Fri Jul 14, 2017 12:29 pm

Hmmm...

Whether using swear words is appropriate is a tricky judgment call. But an even trickier judgment call is how to quote some prominent person who uses swear words. Should those words be sanitized for genteel readers' eyes? Or should the words be reproduced exactly as said so that the reader is not infantilized, and can read and judge the speaker exactly as he expressed himself? Oh, fie!

The best commentary I read on this delicate issue was a letter to the editor of The Economist (not one of mine) on January 9, 2009 responding to an article about the crude-spoken governor of Illinois. In that article, the editors elected not to elide the then incumbent governor's coarse speech. (The former governor is now in prison.) I paste below that letter exactly as it appeared in print:

<<Star reporting

SIR – Thank you for not “starring out” Rod Blagojevich's expletives when reporting his alleged exploits to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat (“The Chicago way”, December 13th). Apart from taking pleasure in being treated as a grown-up (many other newspapers deleted the swearing), I was struck by how much more powerfully the Illinois governor's seedy, cynical greed was communicated when the obscenities were printed in full. F***ing good decision.

Jonathan King
New York >>
"Every battle of ideas is fought on the terrain of language." Zia Haider Rahman, New York Times 4/8/2016

George Kovac
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Re: Tarnation

Postby George Kovac » Mon Jul 17, 2017 4:19 pm

Gentle readers: I just discovered that the alpha-dictionary forbids my use of a particular word, one that is essential to making my point. And that automatic substitution only reinforces my argument about authenticity, place and judgment. Please be assured that I did not use the word "doo-doo" anywhere in my original post. For those readers curious to discover the actual noun I used, you can find its adjectival form at line 504 of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

That said, here is the [edited] post I attempted:

My previous post argued that it is appropriate for responsible media outlets to quote a public figure accurately, even if means printing the speaker's “swear words,” where the circumstances demand such accuracy and nuance. The story I cited was from The Economist in 2009, and involved the fetor of the Illinois governor’s vulgar attempt to sell a US senate seat. To have not quoted Mr. Blagojevich accurately would have been an inappropriate sanitization of his obscene behavior.

Well, I am revising that thesis, which I attempted to limit to its special circumstances. As a culture, we have moved on. We now accept the blurring of the line between the decorum of professional public speech and the demotic speech many of us use when we do not expect to be quoted in the newspaper. To use the current phrase, we have “normalized” swear words at all levels and in all venues.

To support my point, pasted below is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal article “Banks’ Results Raise Red Flags” on Saturday July 15, 2017, quoting James Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan. It was a routine story about run-of-the-mill banking issues:

“We have become one of the most bureaucratic, confusing, litigious societies on the planet. It’s almost an embarrassment to be an American citizen travelling around the world and listening to the stupid doo-doo we have to deal with in this country.”

Did Jamie's use of "doo-doo" add anything to his argument? I'd say, even as an intensifier, "doo-doo" was a lame word in that context. Should the WSJ have published that quote? I'm not sure it added anything, other than to arrest my attention. It was an otherwise boring topic.

...

When you accept, practice or publish swearing routinely, well, you lose the effectiveness of swearing. I am a proponent of the well-deployed swear word. I hate to see the art form diminished by perfunctory execution. Hemingway observed that swearing carried more weight in religious cultures (like early 20th century Spain) than in less devout cultures (like England and the US) where religious devotion was weaker and swearing had lost its passion and its shock value. I am not in complete agreement with Hemingway. I don't think you need to be religious to swear convincingly, but I do think effective swearing requires mindful thought.
"Every battle of ideas is fought on the terrain of language." Zia Haider Rahman, New York Times 4/8/2016

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call_copse
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Re: Tarnation

Postby call_copse » Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:52 am

I can see someone has put a lot of thought into this! :D

As a developer I find it essential to swear, it lets out the steam of frustration of dealing with purely logical machines. Clearly I consider the company I'm in. As an Briton of course we treat those of little import to us with strict formality, whilst unleashing the widest vocabulary possible upon those few friends with whom we may be considered intimate, with various levels in between. What I'm getting at is that if you're sworn at in the crudest terms by an Englishman you can be sure you've reached the pinnacle of his esteem.

I'd say there are very few developers who are significantly religiously inclined. It requires too much application of logic to be open to those comforted by mythical dimensions. To be fair I knew one properly religious programmer, however his work was dire indeed. Interestingly he was the only person I know to blush when mention was made of female sanitary goods. Also, of course, many very competent programmers can get by without coarse language.
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Re: Tarnation

Postby Perry Lassiter » Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:30 pm

I remember ouf senior class in high school studied McBeth. Altho the book printed the word "damn," we went around chanting, "out!Out! DARN spot!"

Incidentally McBeth seems to be one of only two sources of the term "aroint," as in "aroint ye." Avaunt seems to be the preferred definition, but somewhere I remember reading it as a synonym for the above F-word. That makes more sense actually in a scene of milkmaids swearing at a cow that won't hold still.
pl

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Re: Tarnation

Postby George Kovac » Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:56 pm

Recent events, especially of the last several days, demonstrate the continuing relevance of the debate concerning the appropriateness of "swear words" and how they should be reported in the media.

Sometimes it is necessary to publish verbatim quotes to accurately convey the demeanor and depravity of the speaker, as in the case of the foul-mouthed Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich several years ago.

Since then, there seems to have been a competition among politicians to dumb down public language and impress listeners with the false urgency of the message (or the phony toughness of the speaker) by using vulgarities. Such usages were never informative (except to the speaker's state of mind) and now they have lost their ability to shock. They are routinely published as, I suppose, they should be.

I'm not opposed to public profanity, but it should be fresh, creative and imaginative. By now, such language in the mouths of lazy and unimaginative speakers has become expected, boring and jejune. The situation is just fecklessed up.
"Every battle of ideas is fought on the terrain of language." Zia Haider Rahman, New York Times 4/8/2016

Perry Lassiter
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Re: Tarnation

Postby Perry Lassiter » Wed Aug 02, 2017 10:13 pm

"By now, such language in the mouths of lazy and unimaginative speakers has become expected, boring and jejune." Perhaps it is so because the country has become largely boring and jejune? At least to the voters…
pl


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