Propriety Sucks

Contrarians are fated to react poorly to changes in the language, for changes in the language almost always appear to be like a muddy meandering stream ever seeking a lower level and rarely as improvements. I am confident that in the future all oral communication will be by grunting or screaming and written communication will have excised vowels, all text talk all the time.

There are some changes to which we accede with varying grumpiness. For example, I have come to accept and if necessary live with new rules as to split infinitives and prepositions, such that a preposition is a proper word to regularly end a sentence with. Aaaaargh.

On the other hand, the creeping acceptance of “sucks” in common parlance is for me more of an acquired taste, and I have not yet acquiesced in its general usage. My father banned “lousy” from the house for general impropriety and the matter declined from that level for some decades, until “sucks” began appearing on bad sitcoms, seeping into the general culture from below.

Currently a TV ad for some nicotine patch now says that withdrawal “sucks”. How much it sucks is shown on a Suckometer with an arrow pointing from green on the left to red on the right. The patch moves the Suckometer down towards green.

I must admit to occasional use of the word in one context. When a male (but not female) friend is whining I am inclined to “it sucks to be you” in lieu of sympathy. Other than that I usually think there is a better way to express a thought.

Can we get used to absolutely anything? Stick around, time will tell. In the meantime my Suckometer is pretty much stuck on red.