Approximately 361 Words
You Can't Say On This Website

I had the opportunity in 1991 or 1992 to see the late, great George Carlin perform at the WestPort Playhouse in St. Louis.

His performance included a version of his infamous routine "7 Dirty Words You Can't Say On Television." By the early 1990's, the list of seven had grown to many times that number. The ease at which Carlin was able to rattle them off was impressive and amazingly lyrical.

This website has its own set of dirty words that may not be used on our public forums.

We did not create this list, but acquired it when we purchased our editorial system software a couple years ago.

We're not sure who assembled this collection of lewd and lascivious language, but it is someone with a considerably filthier mind than anyone on our staff. While the list started out as approximately 361 "bad words," we have pared down the collection, un-blacklisting a number of them that either have fairly obscure "dirtiness" definitions or none at all.

For instance, the list as it was originally created would have flagged any discussions involving Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson, John Travolta, Sissy Spacek, or Yasser Arafat.

Any talk about taking a trip to Disney World would have resulted in asterisks over the word Orlando.

Certain foods were not allowed to be discussed on our system such as crabs, ranch dressing, a rack of lamb, meat or a cracker.

If you had a baby, any talk of doo doo was unacceptable, and while we allowed the word toilet, the British slang with the same definition -- loo -- was not permitted.

Our system discouraged any discussions that mentioned snow plows, the postal service or water sports. It also frowned on any computer whizzes who may have mentioned zooming in to a photo.

And while some people consider the term redneck a badge of honor, our system considered it derogatory.

There are other phrases on our list that I had no idea what their meanings were until I checked them at an online urban slang dictionary. Some of them were quite… well, disgusting. It might be my naiveté, but I can't even figure out how you would work some of those phrases into a conversation.

I guess that's probably the point with many of those expressions. Their purpose is to be dropped like the F-bomb for sheer shock value. I don't even think the late and very great George Carlin could have worked some of them into his Dirty Words routine. They were wholly lacking any lyrical quality.

In a few weeks we will be migrating our entire website to a new hosting system. The dirty word list will be going with us and while it may not be quite as large as it once was, George Carlin's original seven -- "the heavy seven," he called them -- will still be prohibited.

Thanks to forum user Just_Me for inspiring this blog in one of his posts.