Saturday Stuff and Sucks

Welcome to March. May it bring better weather and health than February. The ten-day forecast in my region is unpleasant, so I'm not holding my breath, but I will continue to take it like a man: holding my head down and whimpering, "It'll never end."
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Catch the red eye to Reykjavik: March 1st is Beer Day in Iceland.
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Perhaps the most intriguing new website of the young year: Catholic Writers Lounge. It's still under construction, but looks promising. It looks like a hybrid: half-blog, half-content, half-resource (my math isn't good). The February 28th blog entry is especially worth reading (grin). I've added it to my links list on the right.
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Warning: Off-Color Content Ahead

How did I spend my morning? Tracking down this question: Is "sucks" a bad word (as in, "The ten-day forecast sucks")? I came to my research with this hazy three-part impression: "It was used for ages to refer to something unpleasant and it didn't have a sexual connotation, then it obtained a sexual connotation, but now its use is so widespread that it is again detached from a sexual connotation."

I think my hazy understanding is right. First, it didn't have a sexual connotation. See this article, which contains this incredible statement:

Jonathon Green in Slang Down the Ages says that cocksucker was current in the 19th century, adding, surprisingly, that "at the time this meant merely `toady' and carried no sexual overtones".

This position seems partially bolstered by Why Do We Say It?, which says the word "sucker" comes from the fish of that name, which is stupid and sucks in anything. A sucker sucks, a sucker is stupid, a person that is stupid sucks, it sucks to be that stupid, etc. Think also of the saying, "Your grandmother can suck eggs." It's another old saying with no sexual connotation (I hope, though one never knows in today's sexually-loaded atmosphere: "Dude! 'Eggs' refers to genitals! Didn't you know that, man?").

I realize my logic here isn't airtight, but you can see why it's possible for people to have used "sucks" with no sexual connotation.

Second, it later obtained a sexual connotation. I trust I don't need to provide many references for this position. Just think back to Wayne's World and the discussion about what sucks more. "Hey, it sucks blue whale. The largest mammal on the planet. Top that."

Third, its use has become so widespread that it has again lost the sexual connotation. I agree with the people at Church Marketing Sucks, who write:

Profanity is culturally and contextually defined. There's nothing inherently bad about any word. In our changing culture previously profane words are losing their original unwholesome associations. 'Suck' no longer references a sexual act in today's context. Instead, it means something disagreeable or offensive (some might say our defense of the word 'suck' sucks). Likewise you could be just as profane and unwholesome using clinical language–it's the context that makes the difference.

(Aside: I know nothing about this website or organization. I merely ran across it while cyber-researching (cybresearching?) this issue, but I liked their explanation.)

If you look in slang dictionaries (like the British one here: highly offensive content, incidentally) or even ordinary dictionaries, you'll see the word is normally defined along the lines of "something objectionable," with no reference to anything sexual.

So, I think you can use the word "sucks" in everyday conversation. Many people will continue to find it sexually-charged (tell them to get their minds out of the gutter), so you run that risk. Plus, I would hope there are urbane ways to express the same thing, though I can't think of any that don't require the use of more syllables. "That sucks," for instance, can be replaced with "That is disagreeable," but it loses a bit of punch. If you know of an effective way to say "That sucks" without adding more words or syllables, please put it in the Comments (no, "That blows" and "That bites" don't work; two sayings, incidentally, that militate against my analysis above). Finally, I would think that phrases like, "That sucks donkey" are sexually-charged and therefore beyond the pale in civil discourse.