Gosh Darn It!

I'm on Facebook this morning when I see a comment on my Newsfeed that irks me: Look at that nicca. He was...
The rest of the comment is irrelevant because the offending part was the avoid-a-word, nicca. I also find myself irked when people say ninja too. Stand-in words just bother me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not really that upset. It's just eyebrow furrowing for me.

We all know what word you're substituting when you say dang or dag. The same goes for heck or h-e-double hockey sticks. I've always had an issue with cursing. Back in my church days, cursing was one vice for which I caught a lot of flack. While I didn't try to justify it, I did take issue with people denouncing me for saying damn when they said dag. The way I see it, cursing was supposed to be wrong because it wished ill intent on people as in I damn you to hell. That's totally different than letting out a quiet damn in frustration to something.

Now let's assume that their logic is right and mine is wrong. God has a list of words he doesn't like. I'm not an etymologist, but I have a strong hunch that our modern day curse words didn't exist thousands of years ago. Also considering the different languages, one man's curse word is another man's random nonsensical sound. When you consider this then there must be something to tie all of our curse words together. Emotion. Emotion or the meaning behind the words is the common denominator that makes a word a curse. Anything less is just public opinion. So if you assume that God deems a curse to be anything that has a negative or inflammatory tint to it, then dag and damn are the same damn thing.

So what does any of this have to do with nicca from the Facebook post? Nicca and ninja are people's roundabout way of saying nigger. There's much debate these days about the new use of the word, but I'll save that for another post. I feel that whatever word you have in mind, go with that one. Don't find another word that starts with the same letters, has the same number of syllables, makes the same sound and try to treat it like it isn't the same thing. Dag-damn-darn, shoot-shit-shucks, hell-heck, nigger-nigga-nicca. They aren't that different unless you're smoking the peace pipe.

"Peace pipe, crack pipe...same thing."