Saturday 25 October 2014

Verbal ejaculations

Is there a word for 'prone to stubbing one's toe'? I am very much prone to stubbing my toe, any toe, and therefore could use such a word. And every time it happens I'm reminded of a brief chat I had at a sports centre with a friendly acquaintance who lamented her experience of being in the sauna with men who could not speak without swearing. In the instance she was referring to the men had not only disregarded her presence in the sauna (whatever happened to minding your language when women are present?), they had been swearing while talking about daughters and about family life in general, in a way that was not particularly hostile or angry. My interlocutrice could not understand this, and I sympathised, although she made a point of saying she could well understand the use of swearing in other circumstances, for example when stubbing one's toe. And for all that I was nodding sympathetically before, I found I couldn't nod in agreement to that point. I mean, why? If you swear when you stub your toe, it's because you're angry: either at the pain, or at the unfairness of how much it hurts compared the the smallness of the injury, at fate altogether, the state of the world, the universe and beyond, or all of the preceding. Or, in the case of people like me, you could be angry at how often it happens. But how can you be angry at something that just happens (even if often)? There's nothing to be angry at, and no one to blame. Consequently I keep my mouth shut until the pain begins to subside and then say 'Ow, that hurt!', or its equivalent. Nevertheless I'm guessing that many people would agree that it's acceptable to ejaculate, under those circumstances, i.e. when provoked by toe stubbings or other shocks, even if the ejaculation is foul-mouthed - and I say this according to the definition of 'ejaculation' which, as those who read dictionaries can tell you, simply means 'something thrown out'. So the big strong man from a Catholic background who is terrified on a roller coaster and utters 'Mother of God!'is ejaculating, albeit in a non-sweary though debatably profane way. This use of the word ejaculation and its derivatives often crops up in non-contemporary novels, and blameless though it may be, I find it always takes a second or two  to get over the shift in meaning between then and now. Agatha Christie is particularly fond of it, especially in her younger days as a writer. I'm only a third of the way through the early stories of Poirot Investigates (1924) and she's already notched up five of them, the first one straightaway in the opening story, "The Adventure of the 'Western Star' ": 'That's queer,' I ejaculated suddenly beneath my breath', says Captain Hastings (thereby showcasing another blameless word whose meaning has become specialised). Similarly, there is a runnnig gag in the underrated rom-com "Kate & Leopold" about the use of of the word 'erection', which in a more innocent age merely referred to something made straight or built up, as in a building or, in the film, the Brooklyn Bridge. Anyway, all this to say, that verbally ejaculating when provoked is a much more serious question than the snigger effect would suggest. Firstly there is the question of which word or phrase gets thrown out of you, and what effect it will have. Regarding this question many of us could say, with the prophet Isaiah:' "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips" '. (Isaiah 6: 5) Then, even more importantly, there is the question of what any unclean verbal reaction says about the heart. On this point Jesus was firm, not to say salutarily insulting: ' "You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil." '(Matthew 12: 34,35; also Luke 6: 45) One of my favourite preachers says that on this subject the heart can be likened to a full cup: when the cup gets disturbed by any sort of provocation the nature of what we say shows what our hearts are made of. Though I don't swear when I stub my toe, there are circumstances when my disturbed heart does not seem very nice at all. It's very humbling, as I believe it's meant to be. It's a reminder of our weakness and of the fact that though God expects much from us, nay expects everything, He is patient with us as we try to get it right. He knows perfectly well we are a work in progress, and that it's only by His grace that we are.






























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