Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Body parts unmentionable

Apparently, the word "scrotum" is now on the censorship list. See, those wicked authors are trying to get one past the elementary school library censors, according to Julie Bosman of the New York Times:
Authors of children’s books sometimes sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph, leaving librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase.
But, you know, any word for "balls" is going to be axed, 'cause it's one of those Unmentionable Body Parts, and the point behind censorship is to erase ideas, not words. In other words, even though every little boy (unless they're very unlucky) has a scrotum, they aren't supposed to know about it until they're, what? 18?

(Thanks to Joe of Joe Irvin's Blog for this amazing bit on vocabulary dimunition.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Deirdre, enjoyed your post and getting in the "real" five-letter word that every boy learns in the first grade if not before. And thanks for mentioning my blog. (This may be a duplicate because my software auto-update was demanding a restart as I hit the publish key a few minutes ago.)