Subject:
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Re: Bye, bye LUGNET
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Fri, 4 Mar 2005 02:08:23 GMT
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Viewed:
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888 times
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In lugnet.admin.general, David Koudys wrote:
> As a Christian, I used to 'take offense' to OMG. But over the last decade, I
> write (and say), "Oh My Goodness!" so that's how I choose to read OMG now.
You are in good company! That's exactly why that usage was invented some time in
the last couple of centuries.
You could also read it as "Oh my gosh" or even "Oh my golly". Gosh and golly
(euphemisms for God) were also invented to stop people from using God's name
explicitly in curses. You could also say "goodness gracious", or "egads" but
they wouldn't match the acronym.
Almost-swear words like "dang" and "darn" (damn), "bloody" (by Our Lady), "gee",
"jeepers" and "jeez" (Jesus), "dickens" (devil) could be offensive to some
people.
I did a search for some of these words on Lugnet:
Dang: almost a thousand times
Jeez: almost a couple of hundred times, including at least once by a known
atheist
Egads: 29 times
Jeepers: 19 times
Jeepers Creepers: (this refers to Jesus' feet) Twice
I happen to know about these because of my heritage and because I love words.
Most people probably would have no idea that any of these could be offensive to
anyone. If I was Swedish, or Jewish, or a Muslim, I would know about whole
ranges of different offensive words and usages.
The point of this digression is that there are always words that could be
offensive to someone. However, from what we know about each other, 80% of us
probably know enough to avoid words and usages which could be offensive to
30%-40% of the others, and words and usages which would be generally taboo for
kids. And an automated filter could be put in place to reflect this, which would
take some load off the admins.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bye, bye LUGNET
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| In lugnet.admin.general, Ken Dowd wrote: <snip> (...) <snip> As a Christian, I used to 'take offense' to OMG. But over the last decade, I write (and say), "Oh My Goodness!" so that's how I choose to read OMG now. You'd have to do something pretty (...) (20 years ago, 2-Mar-05, to lugnet.admin.general)
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