<html> <body> David Boyce wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">How did I get from swearing to kilograms?</blockquote> Actually David, you went even further - kilometers/miles <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">And when I would ask "How wide is this room" and "How far is it to Glasgow", they often could not express an estimate in either system.</blockquote> which has a certain poetic completeness to it, since we now live in a world where it is possible, with a word, to offend someone who, whether near or far in linear distance, may exist in a culture that is a universe away (though, depending upon your view of string theory (not piano strings), that might not be so far either.) Your digression was welcome and enlightening, and a bit depressing as well, both for the description of the UK's aborted (can I use that word?) half-transition to metric, and the idea (perhaps my own interpretation) that culture clash is an inescapable product of the natural formation and evolution (can I say that word) of language, which is extremely local (unless you learn to talk using mass-media).   My ASUS computer screen tells me "Inspiring Innovation - Persistent Perfection" every time I turn it on.  Someone told them alliteration sells.  It has 'Video Intelligence Technology", meaning I can choose from 5 different pre-set viewing modes, which it calls "SPLENDID".  It has probably copyrighted the word 'splendid'.  That's OK.  I don't remember the last time I used 'splendid' to describe anything.   So, at a time when we are explosively reaching out to unfamiliar cultures, language can, at once, be unintentionally hurtful and meaningless. From your description, I would tend to equate the word 'ruddy' with our usage of 'gosh' or 'darn'.  For some, I suppose even those are too strong, either to be read or heard.  What do we accomplish be substituting asterisks within the word?  What do asterisks sound like if read out loud? Ultimately, the question raised by Terry's submission is: how does a particular community derive and maintain its identifying culture?  What are the boundaries of this list, in terms of content, language, tolerance?  It's a process of constant experiment and refinement, like tuning. Finally, you said: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Personally I don't swear at all in everyday speech.  I am careful even with very mild expletives</blockquote> I find this the most fascinating, as it is hard to relate to.  Do you expli-tize in your head and manage, through proper breeding, to control what gets expressed, or do you manage to avoid situations that might tend to generate them (like bad drivers)?  I don't actually want you to answer, as we've truly gone 'off-reservation', but I'll tell you that I will try an experiment, before formally adopting 'ruddy', and that is to observe my EIE quotient : Expletive Impulse/Execution.  This could be life changing. Thanks again. David Skolnik Hastings on Hudson, NY At 06:38 AM 5/23/2012, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Personally I don't swear at all in everyday speech.  I am careful even with very mild expletives I don't want to drag this too far off-topic, but perhaps we are allowed the occasional little digression, in the interest of general Liberal Arts & Humanities? What constitutes swear-words, and their degree of gravity, varies of course with time.  "Bloody" is now less grave than it was in the 1960s.  In UK television we note that the "F" word is now commonplace after the 9pm "watershed" (the time after which more adult content is deemed acceptable on TV).  It's also noteworthy that the "C" word, up till now ABSOLUTELY taboo, is just beginning to appear in broadcasting. The word "ruddy" as a simple adjective means red, as in "he has a ruddy complexion".  But doubtless it is, in an expletive context, a derivative of "bloody", with the references you suggest, Susan.  In the UK it is seen as a very mild expletive, further down the scale than "bloody".  But the point is well-taken that this is an international list.  (In US usage, "fanny" means derierre, but in UK usage it means, well, a lady's "front bottom" and is very rude indeed) As a side-point, manufacturers are increasingly aware of this in naming products, since products are sold internationally these days.  Thus, our much-loved "Marathon" snack bar got changed to "Snickers", which a) sounds like knickers, b) is a word for a snide little laugh and c) loses all the reference to ancient Greece and Phaidipedes, and the connotation of getting enough energy from the snack bar to run a marathon. Another example is the change in name, for Euro-marketing purposes, of a well-known UK cream cleaning product, from Jif to Cif.  "Jif" was short for "Jiffy", a short time. In other words, with the cream cleaner, you can clean the mess up "in a jiffy", an instant.  "Cif" is meaningless in any language.  Another ghastly change is the delicious chocolate/candy bar which was called "Dime", being changed to "Daim".  Shudder. There was the story also about Rolls-Royce years ago, with a new model.  They had Silver Shadow and SIlver Cloud, so the new one was to be called Silver Mist, until someone pointed out that mist is the German word for dung! In the UK we are split between trade with Europe and trade with the USA.  For that reason, our attempt at metrication of all measurements got halted in its tracks.  The poor old greengrocer will get flung in jail and left to rot, if he sells you a pound (lb) of brussels sprouts. His scale and all his prices, must by law be in metric (Kg).  But all our road signs are in miles, including the speed limit signs, and when you buy an auto magazine, it tells you fuel consumption in Miles per Gallon. BUT, in the garage, fuel is sold in price per Litre!  It was full-steam ahead with metrication some years ago, until someone in government realised that the USA is our biggest trading partner, and the USA is resolutely uninterested in metric measurements and prices! When I visited relatives in California, I was delighted by a measuring tape, and Stan my host kndly gave it to me. It has inches along one edge, and along the other edge..... inches.  In the UK they all have inches on one side and centimetres on the other. Personally, I think "imperial" (avoirdupois etc, non-metric) measures are better for  everyday living measurements. My size ten shoe meaures 12 inches - one foot - great for pacing out a room.  And a pound of butter or cheese is a good amount to work with.  Metric lacks the in-between, anthropometric, sizes. Millimeters centimeters and metres are OK for engineering  but there needs to be an inbetween measurement, perhaps a "sesquimeter" (i just invented that), 15cm.  Or something like that.  And I really don;t think we have gotten to grips at all with buying fook in grams and kilograms.  I find that young people here are not nowadays very good in either system.  When I used to teach photographic darkroom work and we measured solutions, I would ask a new class "Do you mostly work in metric or imperial?" and they would all say "Metric".  So I would ask "What height are you?" "Five foot eight!" What weight? "Ten stone three" (143lbs).  And when I would ask "How wide is this room" and "How far is it to Glasgow", they often could not express an estimate in either system. End of digression!  How did I get from swearing to kilograms? Best regards, David. <a href="http://www.davidboyce.co.uk">www.davidboyce.co.uk</a> <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">> Thank you David.  I am on the verge of adopting this usage.  It will feel like an affectation for a while, but eventually, like the euro-seven (7 with a line through the stem) that I took on as a youth, it will work itself into my DNA.   I just hope it's OK with the fundamentalists. It may be okay with the fundamentalists, but I doubt it would always go over so well with the Brits, or at least with some of them. "Bloody" was once a fairly serious swear word there, while it hardly is known here except from watching the BBC. Ruddy sounds like a variant of it. "Bloody" was strong, if I remember right, because it stands for Christ's blood. We should be careful before we decide to adopt foreign slang when we don't know what the bloody hell we are saying. This concern may be wildly out of date, of course ... still ... s</blockquote></blockquote></body> </html>