Saturday, September 30, 2006

prude

Generally I look at the relevant entries at both dictionary.com and askoxford.com before writing my posts, and with today's word the two provide an interesting pair of perspectives. The latter provides the following definition: "a person who is easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity." The former provides: "a person who is excessively proper or modest in speech, conduct, dress, etc." Both entries tie the word back to the French word "prudefemme," essentially meaning a worthy, respectable, chaste woman. Oxford's definition is perhaps the one that holds truest these days; it is more often than not used as an insult when someone is less willing than their peers to discuss or engage in the lewder acts. However, the fact that the word is, as mentioned, also indicative of propriety and worthiness, suggests something about the person who uses "prude" as an insult - specifically, that they are making an effort to be improper and unworthy. It is ironic that people are often ostracized and singled out as "prude" when the singlers out are by definition attempting to break away from some larger idea of conventional code of conduct. Perhaps that code simply no longer exists, and the word is merely a relic of the time when it did, one last way for us all to kid ourselves that we are rebels.

Sidenote: The five words for this week's theme, then, are "fust," "gleed," "wroth," "sooth," and "prude." I mentioned that most of these words are somewhat obsolete; this isn't relevant to the theme. Here's another hint: the words do not fit into the theme by virtue of their definitions or any place you may have seen them. If each one of them meant something completely different, or indeed if none of them had any meaning at all, the theme would still stand.

1 Comments:

Blogger Mo and The Purries said...

prude
too many of those folks still left in the world, in my humble opinion

as for the theme of the week -- sheesh
all I can think of is Hester Prynee running through the woods with a Big Scarlet A on her chest.
Other than that, for sooth, I am stumped.

October 01, 2006 10:03 PM  

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