25 October—Most words that have been considered taboo through the ages and in all languages represent perfectly decent, even pleasant concepts—things and activities—that for one reason or another have become unmentionable in polite society. Organized religion is to blame for lots, if not most, of that nonsense.

Then there are the socially unacceptable, allegedly repellent synonyms—in English, they’re generally four-letter words—that tend to be more concise, direct ways of expressing what may in fact be talked about in polite society. Those words became dirty simply because some social arbiters, for whatever reasons, decided they’d be dirty. And part of their cachet is that they’re not supposed to be uttered in polite society. We like to keep our dirty words dirty.

So, getting past all that bullshit—a word that was used in Barry Commoner’s Citizens Party advertising in the 1980 presidential campaign (which he lost anyway)—what’s the dirtiest word in the English language today? Hint: it’s a four-letter word, and in another context not at all dirty.

Okay. Don’t bother guessing. The dirtiest word in English today is WOKE. That’s right, woke. A long, long time ago it meant weak. But now it’s simply the preterite, the past tense of wake. In the United States, it originally meant to be alert to racial prejudice. But about a decade ago it evolved to shorthand for myriad ultra-left-wing ideas like white privilege, identity politics, cancel culture, and slavery reparations. And that’s only the tip of the wokeberg.

When you look at all the woke assholes who are doing their damnedest to screw up our country, you can’t help but see why woke is now the dirtiest word in our language . . .