Where are you on the hedonist\/libertine\u2013puritan spectrum? As with much in life, moderation is surely the key, so you should be somewhere in the middle. (After all, we need balance, and fulcrums do tend to be somewhere in the middle\u2026)<\/p>\n
Wine, women and song (or, according to your taste, absinthe, men and poetry; or moonshine, sheep and haiku) twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, sounds like hell on earth. If the entire human race was to live that life, who would make the wine\/absinthe\/moonshine?<\/p>\n
On the other hand, drinking room-temperature water, regarding begetting as the only reason for sexual congress, and denying yourself the pleasures of music, poetry and so on, sounds like\u2026 hell on earth. (Aaaggh! D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu!) If the entire human race was to live that life, who would be held up as the bad example whose lifestyle we\u2019re all trying to show we\u2019ve risen above?<\/p>\n
So much for the seesaw\u2019s extremities. While they provide points of reference, let\u2019s move on and in a little, nearer the centre.<\/p>\n
I want to address the subject of cocks.<\/p>\n
Your reaction to that statement will depend upon a number of factors:<\/p>\n
(Before continuing, I seek forgiveness from citizens of those English-speaking countries for whom the Atlantic Ocean is not a factor.)<\/p>\n
The problem originates from the fact that cock<\/em> has many meanings. To be more specific, the problem originates from one particular meaning. To quote the online Oxford Dictionary; \u201cvulgar slang<\/em> A man\u2019s penis\u201d. (as opposed to a woman\u2019s penis? But I digress.)<\/p>\n My 1944 Oxford Dictionary dates this meaning (minus the tautological \u201cman\u2019s\u201d) back to 1730.<\/p>\n Despite this being only one of many meanings, the puritan brigade has shamed us all into feeling uncomfortable about calling cocks cocks, and like a cock watching his hens, has made sure we use the word rooster instead.<\/p>\n The word rooster<\/em> is apparently originally shorthand for roosting bird<\/em> or roost cock<\/em>, and dates back to about 1772. Based on this scant evidence (I\u2019m not paid enough to spend days researching these articles!), it appears that puritan chicken farmers had to put up with a 42 year period of immature people sniggering every time they bragged about the prowess of their male chickens.<\/p>\n My 1944 Oxford Dictionary dismissively acknowledges rooster<\/em> only in a passing reference associated with roost cock<\/em>\u2014and says the word is \u201cchiefly U.S. and dial[ect]\u201d.<\/p>\n The Talk page for Rooster<\/em> on Wikipedia reveals quite entrenched opinions on the cock\u2013rooster question. As a 60-something-year-old Canadian who grew up in England I regard rooster<\/em> as very much an Americanism that has been foisted on the rest of the world by American entertainment in its various forms. I read several of the Bobbsey Twins<\/em> books when I was young, and the Rolling Stones covered \u201cLittle Red Rooster\u201d in 1964, but to me, the male chicken has always been a cock.<\/p>\n Many editions of the Bible would seem to concur. King James, Good News (British Edition), the LDS Bible, Catholic Online (American), and others all show Matthew 26:34 saying, \u201c\u2026before the cock crows\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n However, being immature myself, I must admit to occasional sniggers when I hear the word. And at age eleven, there were those in my elementary school who thought it was funny to mime the name of the late Tony Hancock by pointing at four parts of their body. I may or may not have laughed\u2026<\/p>\n In an effort to avoid sniggers, many people may have adopted the word cockerel<\/em> to refer to male chickens, believing cock<\/em> to be an abbreviation. Tottenham Hotspur fans of the early 1970s no doubt thought along those lines; a supporter song\u2014Nice one, Cyril!<\/em>\u2014was released by an act called \u201cCockerel Chorus\u201d. The thing is, according to most credible sources I\u2019ve read, a cockerel is a young cock (usually under a year old). And since one chicken year is equivalent to 0.19 of a human year, that song must have been recorded by un-weaned babies.<\/p>\n But I digress.<\/p>\n So perhaps it\u2019s time to abandon the word cock<\/em> to that<\/strong> <\/em>definition and seek alternatives for all its other senses. After all, in my lifetime we\u2019ve had to abandon \u201cgay\u201d, \u201cfag\u201d and \u201cfaggot\u201d; and I know of few if any Richards who allow themselves to be called \u201cDick\u201d anymore.<\/p>\n And during what passes for research into these articles, I discovered that donkey<\/em> is a word that may have been adopted in the late eighteenth century so that prudes could avoid the use of ass<\/em> when referring to Equus asinus<\/em>. So the phenomenon is not new. In fact, many of our now-offensive words were quite acceptable in polite company in days gone by.<\/p>\n One day, muggle<\/em> or quidditch<\/em> may well inherit an impolite meaning, and the entire Harry Potter oeuvre will have to be edited or scrapped.<\/p>\n Or maybe \u201cMickey Mouse\u201d will become a euphemism for something really objectionable\u2026<\/p>\n Hope springs eternal!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where are you on the hedonist\/libertine\u2013puritan spectrum? As with much in life, moderation is surely the key, so you should be somewhere in the middle. (After all, we need balance, and fulcrums do tend to be somewhere in the middle\u2026) Wine, women and song (or, according to your taste, absinthe, men and poetry; or moonshine, sheep and haiku) twenty-four hours… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[225,227,226,224,667],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","tag-cock","tag-cockerel","tag-nice-one-cyril","tag-rooster","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}