На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать грубую лексику.
На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать разговорную лексику.
запрещенное слово
запретное слово
запретного слова
запретным словом
He dared me to say the forbidden word.
Anything can attract the attention of the filter — a forbidden word in the heading, an image, not following the templates and so on.
Привлечь внимание фильтра может что угодно — запрещённое слово в названии, фотография, несоблюдение шаблонов и так далее.
Seo copywriting is 1 of the forbidden word — «no» (or not).
In America, there is one forbidden word.
If a forbidden word from the bad words list will be found in the message, it will not be sent.
Если в сообщении будет найдено запрещенное слово, то сообщение не будет отправлено.
There is a forgotten word, no — an almost forbidden word, a word that means more to me than any other in the world, that word is «England».
Это забытое слово, нет — почти запретное слово, слово, которое значит больше для меня, чем другое любое в мире, это слово — «Англия».
Evolution: The forbidden word.
The council plays the forbidden word game.
Impossible is a forbidden word.
Resignation is a forbidden word for us.
Strike is a forbidden word.
You dared speak the Forbidden Word?!
The game should start with only one forbidden word, gradually introducing others.
Игру следует начинать с одного запретного слова, постепенно вводя другие слова.
«Therapy» was once a forbidden word.
«Sharing» is a forbidden word in political discourse, probably because of the deep fear that real equity would mean not enough for anyone.
«Делиться» — запрещенный термин в политических суждениях, возможно, из-за серьезного опасения, что действительная справедливость будет означать нехватку для каждого.
He said I was a mute because I do not speak any forbidden word, and I have never spoken to a man who is not lawful to me.
Он сказал, что я нема потому что я не говорю ничего запретного и я никогда не разговаривала с мужчиной, который запретен для меня.
In fact the word divorce should be a forbidden word in the couple’s vocabulary (R. Avigdor Miller ZT L).
Вообще, слово «развод» должно стать запретным словом в словаре женатой пары (Рав Авигдор Миллер, благословенной памяти).
As long as you use a benign term like the «quantum medium» and not the forbidden word ‘aether,’ you can talk about it in the mainstream press without much fear of ridicule.
И пока вы пользуетесь мягким термином «квантовая среда», а не запрещенным словом «эфир», вы можете говорить о нем в прессе, не слишком опасаясь насмешек.
However, an adult can enter the rule of the «forbidden word«: you can use a picture, but you can not call it — you have to use synonyms.
Однако взрослый может ввести правило «запрещенного слова«: картинкой пользоваться можно, но называть ее нельзя — приходится пользоваться синонимами.
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There is a forbidden word in medicine. This word is gradually disappearing, actively shamed, banned to the ‘alternative’ fringes of medicine, and replaced by newfangled, more fashionable terms. It is also being replaced, in many cases, by its opposite.
The forbidden word? CURE.
The word ‘cure‘ is disappearing from medical references and medical textbooks. It is even being replaced, in many cases, with ‘incurable’.
Have you noticed? More and more diseases are defined as ‘incurable’. There is no cure for the common cold, but that’s not all. Alzheimer’s is incurable (but we’re raising funds to search for a cure). Parkinson’s is incurable (but we’re raising funds to search for a cure). Cancers are incurable (but we’re raising funds to search for a cure). Diabetes is incurable (but we’re raising funds to search for a cure). Hypertension (high blood pressure) is incurable (but we’re raising funds to search for a cure). Do you notice a pattern here? Almost every disease today is incurable, and every disease has an organization, or two, or three, raising funds to search for a cure.Even one of the newest diseases, in terms of being classed as a disease – obesity, has a foundation the “Obesity Treatment Foundation” with a goal – not to cure – but instead of “Optimizing Treatment, Increasing Awareness”.
Depression used to be curable, in many cases, but today it is ‘treatable’. It seems to have become incurable. How can that be? Why is it so? Is the field of medicine moving forwards, backwards, or perhaps sideways? First we need to understand the actual medical meaning of ‘cure’.
What is a cure?
Webster’s dictionary defines cure as:
“recovery or relief from a disease”
“something (such as a drug or medical treatment) that stops a disease and makes someone healthy again” That’s half right. Stopping the disease is a cure. “Making someone healthy again”, or restoring the healthiness that was lost due to the disease, is healing, not curing. If we cure a leg infection by cutting off the leg, the cure does not ‘make them healthy again’. If we only cut off part of the skin, and it grows back – healing makes them healthy again, not the surgical cure.
Definitions in medical dictionaries tend to make more confusion, not less – with definitions that are so broad that almost any aberration from ‘average’ can be viewed as disease. Mosby’s Medical, Nursing, and Allied Health Dictionary defines cured broadly as “restoration of health to a person with a disease or other disorder”, and defines disease with uncommon restrictions, as “a condition of abnormal vital function involving any structure, part, or system of an organism” and “a specific illness characterized by a recognizable set of signs and symptoms, attributable to heredity, infection, diet, or environment.” Stedman’s Medical Dictionary online at Drugs.Com defines cure as “to heal, to make well”. But, surely healing and curing are independent concepts: the body heals, a treatment cures. Both of these definitions of cure allow the disease to continue to exist, as long as the patient is viewed as ‘healthy’ or ‘well’.
Cure, if we are to find real cures, must be defined as stopping the progress of a the disease.
To understand the word ‘cure’, we need a clear definition of the word ‘disease’. Webster’s, unfortunately, does not provide one.
What is a disease? Webster’s gives a similarly poor, weak definition of disease: “a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms“. According to this definition, every physical condition that ‘impairs normal functioning’ is a disease. As a result, every symptom – a migraine, obesity, can be classified as a disease. Even perfectly natural attributes, like sexual preferences and left-handedness, might be considered diseases. I’m not suggesting that Webster’s is at fault. Webster’s simply documents what the collective experts think.Why is there no simple, clear definition of disease in the entire field of medicine? If you look everywhere for diseases to treat, you find diseases everywhere, like a boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
But the medical hammer is not a cure, it is a ‘treatment’. In most cases, medicine is simply not looking for cures.
The news media is making the search for cures worse, not better. A quick scan of Google news for the word ‘cure’ gives everything but actual cures. The first 15 Google News hits using the word ‘cure’ in the title gave the following results:
– 7 articles about fundraising. None of the fundraising organizations spend a majority of funds searching for cures, they search for ‘treatments’, and ways to help patients ‘live with their disease’.
– 5 articles about ‘searching for a cure’. None of the articles were actually about real cures for real diseases in real people. Fake diseases in mice. Treating symptoms. No hint of actual cure.
– 3 articles about nonsense ‘cures’. A cure for boredom, golf slumps and retail store summer doldrums.
There are no articles about actual cures for actual diseases. In the first ten pages of a Google News search for a disease cure, there is exactly one. A cure for Hepatitis C, a drug that kills the virus. It is notable that the only ‘cures’ that are actually documented as true medical cures are toxic chemicals that kill invading bacteria or viruses. There are no other disease cures in medical texts.
Why does the news media misuse the word ‘cure’ so much? Because the word cure has sizzle, gets attention – and also, because there are so few actual ‘cures’ to report on. Fewer than 1 per decade is my best estimate. How many new cures for were discovered in the last 10 years? The last 20 years? The last 50 years? The last 100 years? How many patients were cured of their diseases this year, last year, the last 10 years? We don’t know. There are no statistics for cures. There is no science of cures. As a result, there is no news about cures. Lots of fundraising and non-cures for non-diseases. Few cures.
The science of healthicine provides a definition of disease designed to facilitate ‘cures’. A disease is not a physical state, it has an active progression.
a disease is an ongoing progressive negative medical condition, that has an ongoing cause.
With this definition, all diseases can be cured.
– It is cured when the cause is removed or stopped.
– If it cannot be cured, it is not a disease.
It is important to recognize that diseases are progressive. If it does not have a progression, it might be a disability, a dysfunction, or a simple attribute of the patient, but it is not a disease. If the progression is stopped, the disease is cured. Every disease has a cause, or causes – and if key causes are removed, the progression will be stopped, and the disease has been cured. If the cause returns, the disease will appear again, as a new disease, due to the ‘new (similar) cause’.
There are lots of things that do not cure disease, but are sometimes presented as if they were cures. A ‘treatment’ is not a cure, unless it ‘stops the disease’. A symptomicine is not a cure. Aspirin and Tylenol are not ‘cures’ for headache. They are symptomicines, hiding the symptoms, but not addressing the cause, not curing the disease. When their ‘hiding’ fades, the symptoms reappear.
It is important to clearly distinguish between ‘remission’ and cure. Remission is a remission of symptoms of the disease. When symptoms go into remission the disease is hidden, but the cause might not have been addressed. In these cases, remission of symptoms actually facilitates the progression of the disease. When symptoms are not visible the patient and doctors are less vigilant. Today’s medical systems have great difficulty distinguishing between remission and cure. Was the patient cured, or is the disease in remission? We have no tools to tell the difference in many cases.
A vaccine is not a cure, it is a preventative, although there are many preventatives, that are also cures. Vitamin C, or foods that contain Vitamin C, prevent scurvy. If you get scurvy, Vitamin C, or foods containing Vitamin C, are the cure. No ‘medicines’ can cure scurvy.
One of the most famous medical books, the MERCK Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, does not call Vitamin C a ‘cure’ for scurvy. It says: ‘Treatment consists of oral Vitamin C’, but does not use the word ‘cure’. Has the word cure become forbidden. If you check the MERCK manual a bit more carefully, you will learn that ‘cure’ is not defined, is not in the index, and not in the table of contents. Cure is not clearly defined by the field of medicine, it seems to be forbidden. Or at best, ignored, pushed to the side, discounted, not clearly defined.
It’s clear that scurvy can be caused by lack of Vitamin C (there might be other causes). It is also clear that scurvy caused by deficiencies of Vitamin C can be cured, the progression can be stopped, with Vitamin C, or foods containing Vitamin C. Furthermore, once scurvy has been cured, or before scurvy is present, it can be prevented by appropriate consumption of Vitamin C. The cure for scurvy is not ‘remission’ of symptoms – it is a true cure. The disease is no longer present, although if the disease caused physical damage, that damage might never heal completely.
Many nutritional deficiencies lead to specific diseases that progress as long as the cause is present. In all cases, the only cure is to meet the deficiency, not medicine can cure these diseases.
It is also clear that a new case of scurvy will arise if the cause returns. It is important to note that this is not a return of the disease, it is a return of the cause. If a person fails to consume sufficient Vitamin C – either in foods or in supplements – the person will get scurvy, or get scurvy ‘again’. A new case of scurvy. When a patient’s scurvy is cured and then reappears, there is no ‘remission’ of symptoms, and ‘worsening’ of symptoms. There is simply a cure, and a new occurrence.
Nutrient toxicity, or over consumption, is also a disease that cannot be cured by medicines or medical treatments. If you are consuming too much Vitamin A, you will get the disease hypervitaminosis A. There is a cure. It is simple. Stop consuming too much Vitamin A. No medicine can cure hypervitaminosis A, and any attempts to develop a medicine to treat hypervitaminosis A would be seen as nonsense. There are many diseases that can be cured, but not with medicines.
Obesity is medically classified as a disease – although it can easily exist as a stable state not an active progression. It would not be classified as a disease in the science of healthicine. The process of becoming obese, of continual weight gain could be classified as a disease, but presence of excess weight is simply an attribute, or a symptom, not a disease.
If someone is obese, and they lose weight, such that they are no longer obese, are they cured? The Obesity Treatment Foundation does not mention ‘cure’, does not suggest that obesity can be ‘cured’. They ask for donations to promote awareness and treatment, but the word “cure” is avoided.
Symptoms of obesity can be cured by food restrictions. However, if this temporary fix does not address the causes and the should be considered a cure. If the cause is addressed, obesity can be cured and reversed. If the cause comes back, the disease will return.
We pretend to know that the cause of obesity is overeating. But we don’t know the cause of overeating – and there is considerable evidence that the cause of overeating is obesity. We will not find the cure to the ‘obesity epidemic’ until we find the real causes.
We will not find the cure for any individual patient’s disease, nor for any class of diseases, until we find and address the true causes.
How might we find cures? How might we find the causes of today’s many ‘incurable’ diseases?
We can only find cures for diseases when we use better definitions for disease, and better definitions for cures.
disease: an ongoing progressive negative medical condition, that has an ongoing cause.
cure: stopping the progression of a disease. A treatment that stops the progression of a disease by addressing key causes.
to your health, tracy
Tracy is the author of two books about healthicine:
This week our topic is Forbidden Words! Now when we say forbidden, we don’t mean legally forbidden. This is, after all, still the friggin’ United States of America. And last I looked, we still enjoy the First Amendment right to say whatever we darn well please. We’re talking about morally forbidden words – words that hurt, insult, and demean.
Of course, there is that old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” But that clearly seems wrong. Think of racial epithets, like the N-word. Or ethnic slurs, like the K-word. Or gender-based slurs like the B-word or C-word. That sort of language is incredibly hurtful.
But we have to be careful here, since not all uses of racial epithets are intended to hurt and demean. For example, some black people use the N-word not as a term of derogation, but almost as a term of endearment and/or racial solidarity. Plus there’s a feminist magazine called Bitch. I doubt the publishers of that magazine think of themselves as sexists. Those are what philosophers call an appropriated use of slur words. That’s when a group that was originally the target of a slur, appropriates the word and uses it in a non-slurring fashion. Appropriated uses raise some really fascinating issues. For example, can a black rapper who uses the n-word complain about white people using it — without being a hypocrite? Does anything prevent a white person from using the N-word as a term of endearment? Or can only a black person get away with that?
Those are definitely interesting questions and we’ll take them up in the course of the show. But right now I want to focus on standard, non-appropriated uses of slurs words first. My gut tells me it’s always wrong to call a woman the B-word or to call a Jewish person the K-word. And by that I mean wrong in both the sense of morally objectionable and wrong in the sense of false. To call a Jewish person the K-word is to imply they’re despicable because of their religion. To call a black person the N-word is to imply they’re despicable because of their race. But that’s just false. No one is despicable just because of their race or their religion.
Of course, not everything false is morally objectionable. If I called John Perry a Martian, for example, I’d be saying something false but not anything morally objectionable. Wrongly calling a non-Martian a Martian is different from wrongly calling someone the N-word because when you use an ethnic slur, you’re not just implying something false. You’re also helping to perpetuate or echo a history of oppression. You’re endorsing certain negative attitudes and stereotypes that have historically served to keep the targets of the slur in their place. That’s the morally objectionable part. So when you refuse to use these words, you disavow the oppressive history that’s wrapped up in them.
But we have to be careful here. I don’t mean to say that slurs are always instruments of oppression. Take the word, ‘honky.’ That’s a racial slur typically aimed at the historically more powerful by the historically less powerful. It’s a sort of defensive racial slur. Still, since the word ‘honky’ is used to denigrate white people just because they’re white, you might think it’s just as bad as the N-word. I don’t think that’s quite right. Though both are slurs and both are illegitimate, there seems to me to be an important difference between them. And that’s something that we will explore in this episode.
I should also say that I don’t want to defend the view that slur words can never be either truly applied or morally appropriate. Some people are really and truly A-holes. And some people are really and truly F-ing, Nazi bastards. Such people deserve to be slurred.
I think this shows that we need to distinguish two different kinds of slurs – generalized slurs and particularized slurs. A generalized slur conveys a negative attitude toward an entire class of people – even when the speaker is explicitly referring to just one particular member of that class. Particularized slurs are, well, more particular. More individual. I call a particular Jewish person the K-word, I’m denigrating all Jews, in one fell swoop, and not just this particular Jew. But if I call Smith an a-hole, I’m expressing a negative attitude about Smith, but not necessarily about anybody else. Particularized slurs might sometimes be legitimate. But generalized slurs probably never are.
I hope I’ve said enough to convince you that the language of derogation is subtle and complicated thing and that there is a lot to discuss. I’m eager to have you join in the discussion.
Related Shows
Forbidden Words
Oct 21, 2012
Some words, like n****r, ch*nk, and c*nt, are so forbidden that we won’t even spell them out here.
The Linguistics of Name-Calling
Jan 20, 2013
Sticks and bones may break your bones, but names can also hurt you. And language gives us surprisingly many ways to deride, hurt and de…
Language in Action
Aug 22, 2006
How do we communicate ideas with language? Where does the literal meaning of a word end and the subtle connotation begin?
Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?
Nov 13, 2011
Tribal societies lived in a world of the sacred and profane, ritual and taboo. Is there anything left of this structure in the modern world?
Blog Archive
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Related Shows
Forbidden Words
Oct 21, 2012
Some words, like n****r, ch*nk, and c*nt, are so forbidden that we won’t even spell them out here.
The Linguistics of Name-Calling
Jan 20, 2013
Sticks and bones may break your bones, but names can also hurt you. And language gives us surprisingly many ways to deride, hurt and de…
Language in Action
Aug 22, 2006
How do we communicate ideas with language? Where does the literal meaning of a word end and the subtle connotation begin?
Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?
Nov 13, 2011
Tribal societies lived in a world of the sacred and profane, ritual and taboo. Is there anything left of this structure in the modern world?
Blog Archive
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acrobat
adobe
air
alloy
alpha
amazon
android
aperture
apple
aqua
arc
artisan
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blackberry
book
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bop
brilliance
buzzword
captivate
carbon
cell
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chrome
chromium
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conductor
conker
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continuum
contribute
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domino
duality
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face
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finder
fire
fireworks
flash
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freelancer
geneva
genius
georgia
go
groove
halo
haunt
icing
illustrator
initiate
iterations
jabber
java
jazz
keychain
keynote
kindle
latitude
like
lips
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lotus
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natural
newton
opus
oracle
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outlook
ovation
pages
penumbra
personal
pinpoint
plato
poet
poke
poplar
power
premiere
prestige
prime
prospect
proviso
purify
quad
quake
quantify
quartz
rare
rational
reader
readers
retina
revel
rhapsody
rite
rooms
rosetta
rsvp
safari
sand
select
shake
sherlock
shockwave
solid
solstice
sonata
spaces
spotlight
sprinter
stamina
stars
sun
symphony
textile
thing
think
toolbox
trilogy
tubes
utopia
valet
wall
wave
willow
windows
Notes
Words that we have spoken for hundreds or thousands of years are being stolen from us
Here is a selection of words in the English language that have been trademarked by technology corporations. These words used to belong to us all; now they belong to Google, Microsoft, Apple or one of a dozen others.
I know what you’re thinking. These words aren’t really forbidden. They haven’t really been stolen from us. We can still used them whenever we want to refer to pieces of fruit or glass openings in walls. Right?
Wrong. Try publishing a web site called PlaceBook and see how long it takes Facebook to send in the heavies. Or try developing cross-platform software called wxWindows and wait for the Microsoft word-police to come knocking at your door.
You might think it’s inadvisable to choose a name for any project that contains the word book or window, but the fact is that there are only so many words in the English language, and when words like cell, edge, sun and wall become off-limits, it’s difficult to come up with any name for a project that won’t provoke one technology corporation or another. Now I come to think of it, things made thinkable contains the words thing (an Amazon trademark) and think (an IBM trademark).
Facebook did not invent the words face or book; indeed, it took the idea of a facebook from the schools that have been putting them out for decades. Microsoft did not invent the word window; it did not even invent the idea of a window as part of a graphical user interface, rather, it copied the idea from Xerox and Apple. We are content for corporations to adopt words and ideas from the public domain; this is how innovation happens and commerce thrives. Without embarrassment, they then turn around and forbid us from using the words and ideas they have stolen from us.
These big corporations shut down smaller companies or non-profit projects through bullyboy tactics. Facebook, for instance, cannot legally register face and book as trademarks, so instead it forces its users to agree not to use these words through its user agreement. Microsoft’s insistence that it owns the word windows wouldn’t stand up in court under most circumstances, but no individual or small organisation can afford to say no to a polite request from Microsoft, with its legions of lawyers and virtually unlimited financial resources.
The reality is that these words no longer belong to us. Until we remember that corporations exist for people’s sake, not the other way around, these words and countless others will remain, for many purposes, forbidden.
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Books
Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars by William Patry – a convincing challenge to the very idea of intellectual property, arguing that the entertainment industry is merely hastening its own extinction with its emphasis on prosecuting consumers for petty copyright infringement rather than providing us with the creative music and movies we crave
If a book is listed on things made thinkable, it means I have read it from cover to cover and can recommend it as a thought-provoking follow-up to this visualization
Text
A text summary of this presentation is shown below for easy reference
Adobe
Acrobat · Adobe · Birch · Buzzword · Captivate · Contribute · Coriander · Cottonwood · Director · Distiller · Encore · Fireworks · Flash · Flex · Flood · Illustrator · Ouch · Ovation · Penumbra · Poplar · Quake · Reader · Revel · Shockwave · Sonata · Toolbox · Utopia · Wave · Willow
Amazon
Amazon · Bop · Brilliance · Fire · Kindle · Prime · Readers · RSVP · Thing
Apple
Aperture · Apple · Aqua · Carbon · Charcoal · Chicago · Cocoa · Expose · Finder · Geneva · Genius · Keychain · Keynote · Logic · Monaco · Newton · Pages · Quartz · Retina · Rosetta · Safari · Sand · Shake · Sherlock · Spaces · Spotlight · Textile · Tubes
Canon
Flash · Stars
Cisco
Continuum · Edge · Explorer · Fathom · Jabber · Quad · Valet
Dell
Latitude
EMI
Entrepreneur
Book · Face · Like · Poke · Wall
Android · Boomerang · Chrome · Chromium · Closure · Go
IBM
Alloy · Current · Diligent · Domino · Icing · Initiate · Iterations · Jazz · Lotus · Poet · Power · Prospect · Proviso · Purify · Quantify · Rational · Rhapsody · Solid · Think
Microsoft
Access · Arc · Conker · Excel · Fable · Freelancer · Georgia · Groove · Halo · Haunt · Lips · Natural · Outlook · Pinpoint · Rare · Windows
Oracle
Java · Oracle · Solstice · Sun
RIM
Blackberry
Sony
Air · Alpha · Artisan · Cell · Conductor · Connect · Contact · Core · Design · Duality · Opus · Personal · Plato · Premiere · Prestige · Rite · Select · Sprinter · Stamina · Symphony · Trilogy
Xerox
Rooms
Date
First published 19 August 2012
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Ever wonder why the English word for “bear” sounds nothing like the Latin word ursus or the Greek word arktos? According to Ralph Keyes’s Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms, the oldest known euphemism was the Proto-Germanic beorn (literally «the brown one») which early Northern Europeans used a thousand years ago or so instead of the “real” name for a bear.
Why? Because uttering their equivalent of «bear» might summon them. The Online Etymology Dictionary claims the “blood-thirsty beast that shall not be named,” therefore fear was pretty common. The Irish name for a bear was «the good calf,» the Welsh called it the «honey-pig,» the Lithuanians called it «the licker,» and the Russians said medved, or «honey-eater.”
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This one is about being terrified of writing a word, but the idea is the same. The fear of syphilis was so strong in the 15th and 16th centuries, according to Paul Chrystal’s In Bed with the Ancient Greeks, that doctors would use the Greek letter sigma as a symbol for syphilis for fear that writing the word might somehow evoke it.
Syphilis — or, uh, “Σ” — is named after a mythological shepherd named Syphilus «who was cursed by the god Apollo with a dread disease.»
Even modern medical textbooks (such as David Allison and Dr. Nicola Strickland’s Acronyms and Synonyms in Medical Imaging) still advise students of the possible use of “Σ” in place of the word syphilis.
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Unless you are rehearsing or performing Macbeth, saying «Macbeth» in a theater will bring bad luck at the least and outright disaster at the worst. Actors believe the play is cursed because of its history; two different actors have actually died on stage while performing it. The play also was at the center of a deadly riot. Some believe Shakespeare was cursed by witches offended by the play — or even that the playwright intentionally cursed the play himself by putting real spells into the witches’ dialogue.
If you must allude to Macbeth in a theater, it’s better to call it «the Scottish play» instead.
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Urban legend has it that if you look into a mirror in a room lit only by a candle and chant «Bloody Mary» repeatedly, an apparition will appear in the mirror. What exactly you will see varies from teller to teller, but most agree that a woman will appear and do something absolutely terrifying. An older version of this myth said that if young, unmarried women looked into a mirror while holding a candle, they could catch a glimpse of their future husbands. In Japan, a similar legend is told about Hanako-san, a young girl who appears in the mirrors of school bathrooms when students call her name.
Scientists have suggested that staring into a mirror in a dimly lit room and chanting can cause one to hallucinate, or even to hypnotize themselves — a more probable, if less spooky, explanation for this effect.
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Sir James George Frazer’s classic comparative religion tome The Golden Bough relates that a custom “most rigidly observed amongst Australian aborigines” is to never, ever utter the name of the recently dead. Not only is it a “gross violation of their most sacred prejudices,” but it also might evoke a ghost.
One of Frazer’s colleagues once unknowingly shouted a dead man’s name, the story goes, and one man in the tribe “took to his heels and did not venture to show himself for days.” The so-called “power of the malign spirits” are so strong, apparently, that the dead are referred to as “the lost ones” until “Couit-gil, the spirit of the departed” departs, himself, “towards the setting sun.”
In South America, among the Goajiros of Colombia, Frazer reports, “to mention the dead before his kinsmen is a dreadful offense, which is often punished with death.”
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Every thespian knows that it’s bad luck to wish an actor «good luck» before a performance. Instead you should say «break a leg.» One possible explanation for this superstition is the belief that the theater spirits will always cause the opposite of what you say to happen.
This is a variation of the evil eye, an idea common to cultures all over the world, that wishing for luck or boasting about good fortune will curse you, so one should wish for misfortune or criticize their blessings aloud instead.
There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England.
Winston Churchill
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Sir Winston Churchill, Jack Fishman (1974). “If I lived my life again”, W.H. Allen
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