Sterling’s Truths for Life #130

If you use four letter words daily, then what do you use when you require a strong word for an unusual situation, like hitting your thumb with a hammer? You've sucked the vitality and meaning out of these words. However, if you don't utter a four letter word, even avoiding it when you smash your thumbs, if you hold out until something truly deserving of the word comes up, it will have considerably more meaning and you can capture all the urgency, horror, and atrocity of a situation in one syllable.

For example: Consider Star Trek: The Next Generation. Data never says a curse word or even acts in a way that we imagine that it was likely that he ever would. That in a setting where we get the feeling few of the characters curse very often. This sets the stage for one of the best movie lines of all time. When Data in Star Trek: Generations says, "Oh, @#%$!" We know something truly and epicly bad is happning.