Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

204 Forbidden Words
off-colour, down in the dumps, indisposed, out of sorts, below par, out of
kilter, green around the gills, one degree under, in bad nick, in a bad way,
poorly, funny, laid up and seedy. Advertisements for cold remedies these days
show the office worker pulling a sachet or bottle out of the office drawer – the
emphasis is very much on soldiering on. Even when the complaint is more
serious, the talk can be just as vague. The problem or trouble might warrant a
procedure and if there is a turn for the worse, expect complications. The sick
person might then be described as doing as well as can be expected. General
expressions like bouts, episodes and turns also treat illness as short term.
Doctors use a similar strategy when they ask Do you experience any discomfort?
instead of Do you have any pain? Even the word disease was once a
euphemism, as its constituent morphemes reveal – dis- ‘cease to’ and ease ‘be
comfortable’. The expression to be in condition is the contrary of to have a
condition, which is used of some fairly serious illnesses, though usually with
an appropriate qualifier such as heart, liver, kidney. The expression to be in a
delicate condition was once used of pregnant women but is now rarely heard;
perhaps as a result of advances in medicine, the social taboos surrounding
pregnancy are no longer strong. Such euphemisms respond to our notions of
decency and decorum, and support the already strong taboos against mentioning
one’s bodily effluvia. Sick leave covers every kind of indisposition that
keeps one away from work. People talk about being sick to describe the
condition of vomiting; they talk about having an upset stomach or the runs
rather than diarrhoea; an advertisement for travel sickness pills refers to
being uncomfortable while travelling; a woman might say I’m not feeling
too good, rather than I’ve got menstrual cramps. Nicknames like the barfs, the
trots, Montezuma’s revenge and Bali Belly are also commonly used of indecorous
illnesses of this sort, which are more humiliating than life-threatening. 1
One way of confronting fear is to make fun of it. Humour is often used as a
means of coming to terms with the less happy aspects of our existence. There
are jocular names for even serious illnesses: during the last century, the fear of
syphilis gave rise to an array of flippant rhyming slang expressions for pox,
such as band in the box, jack(-in-the-box), Nervo and Knox (music hall stars
of the 1930s), as well as bang and biff [¼ syph(ilis)] and hat and cap [¼ clap].
The dread of disease
The fear of disease is a happy restraint to men. If men were more healthy, ’tis a great
chance they would be less righteous. (Edmund Massey in a sermon, 2 July 1722;
quoted by Black 1986: 78)
As any narrative history of medicine reveals, fear and superstition have
always attached to disease. It didn’t help that early treatments were often