Do people who use these words really not realize this, or do they just not care?

Consider.

First of all, let it be said that despite being a clergyman of a conservative Christian tradition, I personally am not hypersensitive to bad and even vulgar language. To be honest, when a youth group member has stood up in a canoe and dumped me into a river, or a tire has gone flat on the way to visit a shut-in who lives in the uncharted depths of Darkest Iowa, I myself have been known at times to use language not generally associated with my profession.

That said, I was not raised to use bad language. In fact, I have always been mindful of the observation of my Uncle Walt- a professional journalist- that those who use such language demonstrate at least the presumptive lack of an adequate vocabulary.

Anyway, I have a bone to pick with a contemporary development in popular English.

For a long time, people without the guts to use the other "F word-" for which it is a synomym- have used another expression which I think of as "the chicken word." First, it rhymes with "chicken." And secondly, it is used by chickens (in the sense of "cowards"). This word is a corruption of yet another, well-established vulgar term for sexual intercourse, which rhymes with "digging." And make no mistake: whether the verson that rhymes which "chicken" or the one which rhymes with "digging," the alternative "F word" has precisely the same meaning as the "F-bomb" itself. These are nothing more or less than vulgar words for the sex act, and they are absolutely out of place in polite company.

But recently we seem in our society to have come to a common consensus that somehow these words are acceptable, whereas the other "F word" is still not. I find this puzzling. When I challenge people for their inappropriate use of these vulgar words, they usually point out with great indignation they said the word which rhymes with "chicken," or the one that rhymes with "digging," rather than the one that rhymes with "clucking-" as if that made the slightest difference.

We're encountering the "chicken word"everywhere these days- including in the mouths of people who would never use the one remaining word which, by general consent, is out of place in polite company. I get the feeling that the overwhelming majority of people who use the alternative "F-word" really don't realize that they're nothing but a synonym for the other one. They just don't realize that they're being vulgar, much less just how vulgar they're being. More and more, the alternative "F-word" is turning up on line, and even in television dialog, in places where its synonym would never be regarded by most people as acceptable.

I recognize that I'm on a slippery slope here. "Darn" originated as a "polite" way of saying "damn," back in the days when Rhett Butler's response to Scarlett O'Hara was still generally regarded as shocking. In the States," "bloody" has traditionally been seen as innocuous, since the history which makes the term less than polite in England is one with which most Americans are utterly unfamiliar. But that doesn't erase its vulgarity in a British context. Even the innocent "gosh" is essentially a substitute way of taking God's name in vain.

There is a difference, though: nobody actually prays to Gosh. It is not a synonym of "God." The "chicken word," on the other hand, is nothing more or less than a direct synonym of the One Great Remaining Verbal Taboo That Isn't an Ethnic or Racial Slur.

There is no question that our culture is rapidly coarsening. There are very few words which have not at one time or another passed the lips of even those of us who make an effort to keep our discourse on a higher level- including people like me, who hold an office even more incompatible with that sort of language than simple Christian profession. One of the reasons why I think attention needs to be paid to the rapid spread of the substitute "F-word"is that, whether we realize it or not, it represents a quantum leap in that coarsening.

But doubtless part of the problem is that Western society has been "dumbing down," as well as coarsening, for quite a while. I was one of those who was bent out of shape- probably more so than was warranted- when the entire world celebrated the arrival of a new millennium a year early, unaware that there had never been a year zero- and thus, that 2001, rather than 2000, actually marked the beginning of the Third Millennium. "What difference does it make?," people asked- even when the media, which at the turn of previous centuries had kept the public well-informed enough about the application of simple mathematics to avoid that particular blunder, this time bought into it right along with everybody else.

The difference it makes is that being ignorant isn't a good thing, especially when an entire society goes in for it. The early celebration of the change of millennium was one thing; its endorsement by the very organs of society dedicated to literacy and accuracy of thought was quite another.

The people we rely on to inform us on the issues of the age really ought to be able to count from one, even if we can't. And that, I think, is what is really going on with that amazing alternative "F word." Yes, mores are coarsening. But not, I think, so fast that most of the people who have begun using the "chicken word" of late have simply forgotten their breeding. No, I think what is going on here has more to do with such seemingly innocuous bits of stupidity as the entire Western world celebrating the arrival of a new millennium in what was in fact the final year of the old one.

People have begun using a vulgar synonym for sexual intercourse in common, everyday conversation for the same reason they thought that the new millennium began in 2000: they don't know any better. They really don't realize that the words which rhyme with "chicken" (and the one that rhymes with "digging") are every bit as vulgar as the that rhymes with "plucking." And they don't know any better because the people whose job it is to make sure that they do know better simply aren't doing their jobs.

It's bad enough that the "chicken word" has crept into everyday usage. But it utterly unacceptable that it's common usage is even reflected by network television. I'm not saying here that the networks should impose some kind of puritanical standard which differs from that of commonly accepted public mores. But I am saying that network television- as well as the other media- have an absolute obligation to assist an increasingly illiterate and ill-informed society in at least using language in accordance with the standards which it intends to use it, and honestly believes that it is using it.

When people say "frickin," much less "frigging," we who are at least somewhat literate need to confront them as to what they are really saying. And if people really want to use vulgar language, they ought to realize that that is what they are doing- and to have the guts to go the whole way and say it in terms that no one can mistake.

ADDENDUM: Here's one I myself have been known to run afoul of: how many of us stop and think that when we say, "that sucks," we're using an expression which actually refers to fellatio?