Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Sex and bodily effluvia 167
is her cherry is in sherry; 65 as also was the red rose on the prostitute’s dress
that once indicated that the shop was closed to business. Australian English
I’ve got my P-plates is truly euphemistic verbal play: ‘P’ presumably for
‘period’, but P[rovisional driver]-plates have red P on a white background.
Because of the British military’s pre-twentieth-century predilection for red
coats, the cavalry’s here, entertaining the general and French j’ai mon
anglais all refer to having a period. The army’s association with bloody deeds
is not irrelevant, either. Blood gets direct mention in bloody Mary, and
indirect implication in the gal’s at the stockyards. Other X-phemisms characterize
indisposition, antipathy, periodicity and visitation. INDISPOSITION:
indisposed, under the weather, unwell, sick; have stomach ache, the cramps.
ANTIPATHY (generally dysphemistic expressions or, at best, dysphemistic
euphemisms): the jinx, the pain, the foe, the plague, the curse, the drip,
cramps, be off the roof. PERIODICITY: Latin mensis ‘month’ is the source for
the menses 66 of medical jargon, and the basis for Latin menstruare, whence
English menstruate. I’ve got / I’m having / it’s my period; I’ve got my regular;
It’s that time (of the month); It’s my time; It’s the wrong time of the month;
I’ve got the monthlies; It looks like a wet weekend; It’s blood week. When the
Australian magazine Woman’s Weekly came to be published monthly, the
name was specifically not changed to Woman’s Monthly to avoid direct
association with menstruation. SANITARY PROTECTION: on the (red) rag
(OTR); riding the cotton pony; on the saddle blanket; riding the horse.
VISITOR: little sister’s here; the girl friend; my buddy/friend/foe’s here; Fred’s
here; George has come; I’ve got Fred/George/Jack; little Willie/Aunt Susie is
here; Aunt Flo is coming from Redfield/taking the slow train to Redlands; Kit
has come. The notion of a visitor (which is not unique to speakers of English,
cf. Russian gosti prisˇli ‘guests have come’, tetka prisˇla ‘aunty is visiting’,
Akan cahuri asi ‘he has jumped and landed’, akoa no abEduru ‘the man has
arrived’) 67 is presumably motivated by the temporary nature of a period and
the added trouble it brings. On the face of it, the adoption of male names is
surprising; perhaps it arises from the (dysphemistic) idea that the default
resident of a woman’s sexual organs is a troublesome male.
The euphemism I’ve got my flowers is an old expression that has almost
died out, except in Irish English (though it is listed as contemporary in Ernster
1975). Yet it seems to linger on in folk memory. In 1988, Ruby Wallace
described her reasons for having her left shoulder-blade tattooed:
From the age of 15 onwards my periods stopped [because she was severely anorexic]
. . . when my periods restarted, so many years later . . . [they] were a sign of health, of
recovery, and to me they were a sign of womanhood that I welcomed and had in fact
longed for.
When I felt secure that I was fully ‘well’ and had learned to cherish my female body
and femaleness, I wanted to celebrate. I performed what amounted to a menstrual rite.