Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

268 Notes to pages 153–7
there are hypercorrect unreduced vowels and extended vowel lengthening as in
faaabulous (cf. Zwicky 1997).
25 Morrish 1997: 340.
26 His best quips are well known. Some examples: ‘There is no such thing as a moral
or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written’, ‘There is only one
thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked
about’, ‘The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it’ (Picture of Dorian
Gray, 1891); ‘What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the
value of nothing’ (Act 3 of Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1893); ‘The English country
gentleman galloping after a fox – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the inedible’
(Act 1 of A Woman of No Importance, 1894); ‘The truth is rarely pure and never
simple’, ‘In married life three is company and two is none’ (Act 1 of The
Importance of Being Earnest, 1899).
27 Lord Darlington in Act 1 of Lady Windermere’s Fan.
28 ‘The Decay of Lying’, 1889.
29 Pop singer George Michael claimed entrapment by plain-clothed policeman
Marcelo Rodriguez in Will Rogers Memorial Park, Beverly Hills on 7 April
1998. Michael was charged with committing a lewd act.
30 Morrish 1997: 337f.
31 London Times, 21 February 1994, p. 15.
32 Chauncey 1994.
33 Chauncey 1994: 64.
34 Chauncey 1994: 273, 276.
35 The Stonewall riot, 27–29 June 1969, began at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich
Village, on the night of Judy Garland’s funeral. The gay bar was raided and for
once the queers (gays, lesbians and drag queens) rioted, throwing whatever they
could lay their hands on at the police; there was also a chorus line of queens
singing ‘We are the Stonewall girls.’ The next day there were placards and graffiti
calling for gay liberation, gay power and the legalization of gay bars. The ‘hairpin
drop heard around the world’ led to the formation of the Gay Liberation Front and
similar organizations. See Stewart 1995.
36 We have also heard GLBTIQ – gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, intersexual, queer!
37 Chauncey 1994: 280.
38 Gay icon Judy Garland played Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939),
directed by Victor Fleming.
39 Zwicky 1997: 23.
40 In the 1994 Stephen Elliott film The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert,
the boys were Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and Felicia (Guy Pearce). In prison communities,
it is common for gays to be addressed by women’s names, cf. http://
www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/national/16rape.html. Accessed October 2004.
41 The vagina is also known as a snapper, clam and oyster – the fishy associations
arising from the fishy odour being commonly attributed to this organ; we therefore
find terms like fish(tail) and ling for ‘vagina’ (and hook for ‘penis’); mermaid
was a euphemism for ‘whore’. The plant Chenopodium vulvaria, also known as
stinking goosefoot, was ‘readily told by its repulsive smell of decaying fish’ (Fitter
1971). The noun and verb fishfinger denote ‘digital stimulation of a woman’; and