Four Letter Words. Why is everything becoming a four letter word and why is it bad?

a lot of vulgarities are 4 letters long, at least in English. in other languages, they seem to be 5 letters long.

so, the “4 letter” moniker underscores the speaker’s idea that term “X” is vulgar, or unwelcome at the very least.

Snarky is becoming a four-letter word, for example.

I was about to answer and then noticed your ‘whispered’ guidlines.

I respectfully withdraw both my snarky comment and snide remark.

<Removed for the good of the cause>

@Grisson no, you put an extra “X” and it’s drrrty. so that would be a 4letter word because that’s some hardcore stuff.

My whispered guidelines were there to prevent this kind of drivel. if you want to respond to that, do it on my profile. not here.

I just want answers or actual insight into what this means or why it happens.

<Removed for the good of the cause>

@Perchik smile! my first answer was to your point. using terms like “drivel” tends to cool the mood.

@Perchik
escuse me if this is considered “snarky”, but I might just use the last part of your detail section for every question I ask for now on….Lurve

@90s_kid awesome.

I’m pretty sure that it goes no deeper than the fact that s**t, f**k, d**m, c**t, c**k, and any number of other nasty expletives(ish) have four letters. The logic is highly flawed, of course, but it’s just an expression.

It simply means that something is becoming bad – many of the vulgarities in the English language have four letters. I know there are many things that are good that have four letters in the English language, but there are also very many good things with more or less letters.

I don’t know this definitively – it’s just my hypothesis.

The term “Four letter word” refers to English swear words, as many of them are four letters. I can think of at least 3 for penis, 3 for breasts, 1 for vagina, 3 for copulation, and 1 for the bum. So to “become a four letter word” means the word in question starts to carry the same connotation as the four letter swear words: heated, contentious, the use of the word around casual acquaintances may not be seen as polite, etc.

@dynamicduo “num num” is six letters.

Control freak is the new four-letter word.

Be kind to @Perchik, his parents probably were humor-challenged. As such, all humor is lost on him. It simply ain’t funny. Of course, that makes him a target for every dart people are just waiting to let fly. It simply ain’t nice, people. Wise up.

Also, I was thinking, aren’t douche and troglodyte four letter words?

<Edited. no comment.>

Humor is not lost on me and I don’t think I’m a control freak.

I knew that this question would attract a lot of sarcastic responses because “four letter word” seems to be such a common phrase, that it seems that I’m obviously missing something easy.

Perhaps I could have added my whisper in a less offensive manner, I just wanted quick answers.

Please do not attack me or my family as you have no clue who I am. I don’t follow many of you on here, and I’m unfamiliar with your humor. I don’t know when you’re being serious, when you’re joking, or neither, but a lot of the time it comes of as hurtful from an outside standpoint. When you spend a lot of time here, you start to know people and how they act. That being said, I’m only here occasionally and I’m not familiar with that many of you.

blah.

@Perchik, “four-letter-word” just means flag word or buzzkill word, or maybe “one of those topics that merely get people’s backs up”, with the implied meaning that polite people don’t use this word or talk about this subject, and even vulgar people who use it should expect some negative feedback.

Because of the reasons given above.

I don’t like it either. It’s vague.

There are also a ton of four letter acronyms—that are another reason why four is a bad thing. There not quite as bad as 3 letter acroymns though (TLA)

LMAO, TTYN

The transition of a word to four letter status usually also means the transition of that word to cliche status as well. Truly as Wiki puts it, “a saying, expression or idea which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning, especially when at some earlier time it was considered distinctively meaningful or novel, rendering it a stereotype.”.

@Jayne
You think you’re soo cool just because you can say swears and explain sex to me…
Oh I lurrrrrrrrve yyou!!!!

@90s You confuse me…

Ditto. :)

Literalismed!

(“Four letter word” is just an expression.)