Words you can’t say when you’re six
I’ve been explaining the semantics of swear words to my kid. He already knows some of the “bad” words, but not what they mean, or why sometimes they’re ok to say. Discussions have been along the lines of:
You can’t say “crap,” but you can play craps in Las Vegas.
You can say, “Wow, the Hoover Dam is big!” But you can’t say “Damn, the Hoover Dam is big!”
You can say, “Dante’s Inferno is a book about Hell.” But you can’t say “Reading Dante’s Inferno was hell.”
You can say, “The farmer used an ass to plow his field.” But you can’t say, “The farmer fell on his ass while plowing the field.”
Meethinks George Carlin has been through this territory before.