Hello slang fans!
I've added 5 sets of slang updates:
Don't forget that the Online Slang Dictionary now has Vulgarity Meters, which show you at a glance whether a slang word is workplace appropriate (or ever appropriate.)
Come by the site, sign up for a user account, and weigh in with your vote on how vulgar these new and updated slang words are!
-- Walter (waltergr@aol.com)
I've added 2 sets of slang updates:
Don't forget that the Online Slang Dictionary has Vulgarity Meters (which show how offensive a slang word is) and Usage Voting (which shows you how common a word is.)
Come by the site, sign up for a user account, and weigh in with your votes!
-- Walter (waltergr@aol.com)
A reader e-mailed me with the following question:
The vulgarity meter apparently is a measure of how obscene a word is considered. I wonder why you didn't name it "obscenity index" or obscenity-something-else. To me, "vulgar" means "common".
Excellent question. Read on for my (long-winded) reply.
Before I released the feature to the website, it was called "Offensiveness meters." (In fact, in the program code, that's what it's still called.) I didn't like the choice of the word "offensiveness" both because it's a long word (which doesn't look good in a design sense in some places on the website) and because it's connotation is too much "hurtful" and not enough "obscene."
I did some research and found that the word "obsceness" is relatively obscure - for example, my e-mail program flags it as a misspelled word. "Obscenity" is far more common, but (I felt) carried less of the connotation of being a measure of something. As in, you might say, "There was a lot of obscenity in that film," but (perhaps) less likely, "I felt that film's obscenity was 50%."
Obviously the finer points of connotation are arguable, but that was my thought process. So I looked for synonyms and settled on "vulgarity", which I felt was a) more common than "obsceneness" and b) captured better than "obscenity" the sense of being a measurement.
But the reader is right - I totally missed "vulgar" as "common".
What do you think? What would you name the feature?
-- Walter (waltergr@aol.com)
Hello slang fans!
I've added 5 sets of slang updates recently:
Don't forget that the Online Slang Dictionary now has Vulgarity Meters, which show you at a glance whether a slang word is workplace appropriate (or ever appropriate.)
Come by the site, sign up for a user account, and weigh in with your vote on how vulgar these new and updated slang words are!
-- Walter (waltergr@aol.com)
