With the passing of George Carlin, the discussion of his famous “7 Words You Can Never Say on Television” came up. It is interesting to see which words have made it on the air (at least on HBO) and which ones are still rarely used in the U.S. market.

And of course, You Tube has several recorded routines from Geoge Carlin on this topic. I like this version from 1978 because he first has a discussion of roots vs. derived words and then follows with notes on alternate vocabulary for the banned terminology.

This is a monologue which most clearly demonstrates the futility of assuming that grammar follows rational logic (a lot is random convention). In any case, I will miss his analytic skills.