I feel bad for bridge players

I’ve noticed recently that hearing a formerly innocuous common verb now has the power to send people reeling in involuntary disgust. If a bridge player says, for example, “my heart *****s your diamond” or a scientist says “this principle is *****ed by that principle,” people are now prone to grimacing, as if in a sudden spasm of unbearable pain, at the mere sound of the word in question.

Alas, this formerly useful word has now become associated with a certain intellectually and emotionally challenged individual in political office. How strange that a person can be in a position to rain unspeakable destruction upon our world, while lacking the ability to, say, read and understand a letter of resignation written by his own Secretary of Defense.

I feel especially bad for bridge players, who cannot avoid the now tainted word. I myself have started to carefully avoid it, because of the look of agonized horror I see upon people’s faces the moment they hear the sound of it.

Instead, I find myself reaching for some other word, even if the resultant meaning is less exact. After all, common decency *****s grammatical precision.

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