Yo, Dr. Ink,
Can you please explain for me all the hypersensitivity to the word “sucks”? I’ve been an arbiter of language at a major metropolitan newspaper, and I guess I understand that the word CAN be used in a vulgar way. But most people never have done so; the word has many appropriate uses; and the common slang usage, which rates a rather calm mention in my Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is to connote that something is objectionable or inadequate. What’s the big deal, Doc?
Cheers,
Your Boss
Jim Naughton
Answer:
Dr. Ink, being an old man, but not as old as his boss, has a long memory, and still a good one. In the early 1970s, Doc used to hang out with linguists, one of whom surveyed men and women on the words they thoughts were most objectionable. The men, interestingly enough, selected an Anglo-Saxon four-letter word that referred to a woman’s private parts and could also be used as a nasty epithet against women. Doc does not like the word, doesn’t use it, never will, and won’t print it here.
The word women found most offensive was “suck.”
Now the early 1970s were a most interesting time in American political and sexual culture, a moment when the movie “Deep Throat” changed the nature of pornography, and also became the enduring nickname for Woodward and Bernstein’s most secret source.
Many of the elements of that grainy movie are now the staple of contemporary porn. And many sexual acts, once confined to pornography or erotica, are now commonly discussed by characters in situation comedies. Few of us thought we would live to see the day when Detective Sipowicz could say “asshole” or “pissed-off” right there on network television. In the words of the great political scholar and U.S. Senator Patrick Moynihan, “deviance” has “devolved downward.”
In language, this will lead to all kinds of semantic shifts. Think, for example, of all the innocent definitions of ‘cock’: a rooster; any male bird; a weather vane; a leader; a faucet; the hammer in a gun; the jaunty tilt of a hat; the costume Jim Naughton wore when, as a reporter for The New York Times, he tried to interview President Ford.
“Suck” is one of these words. It has devolved from its oral/sexual meaning — with possible homophobic undercurrents — where it picked up its negative connotations, and has been applied as a harsh predicate to any subject the speaker or writer detests.
Dr. Ink Googled “suck” and came up with only one porn site in the top 10. Among the other sites, he discovered that some people think that homework, milk, AOL, fencing, school, and many other such things “suck.”
Dr. Ink will lay this down so even his naïve boss can get it: “Suck” was a bad word 30 years ago. It is not so bad now, but those of a certain age who use it in the attack mode remember the old meaning and feel a little twinge of rebellion when we can use it in public with impunity.
