Diacritiques

Dans le New York Times, on peut publier un article qui parle d’un livre ayant une obscénité dans le titre, mais on ne peut imprimer le gros mot en question dans les pages du journal, style éditorial oblige.

On cite alors le livre ainsi : “On Bull - - - - “, et on évite de nommer le concept qui pourrait offenser en écrivant [bull] ou bull … seize fois dans l’article. Extrait:

“I used the title I did,” [Prof. Harry G. Frankfurt] added, “because I wanted to talk about [bull] without any [bull], so I didn’t use ‘humbug’ or ‘bunkum.’ ”

Bull, il paraît, n’est pas une forme enjolivée de bullshit, mais un terme bien plus ancien : bullshit date en effet du début du 20^ème siècle, alors que bull, signifiant “mensonge, tromperie”, est connu depuis le moyen-âge et viendrait du vieux français boul.

Via Crooked Timber.

It is possible for the New York Times to publish an article about a book that contains a swearword in the title, but its stylistic rules forbid the actual printing of the word in question.

The solution: the title is cited as “On Bull - - - - “, and the article body mentions [bull] or bull sixteen times. This leads to (unintentional? it’s hardly credible) contortions like these:

“I used the title I did,” [Prof. Harry G. Frankfurt] added, “because I wanted to talk about [bull] without any [bull], so I didn’t use ‘humbug’ or ‘bunkum.’ ”

Bull, it appears, wasn’t originally a fig-leaf word, created to sanitise the offending bullshit. It may derive (there are other theories) from Old French boul and has been around since the middle ages, denoting trivial or false statements (whereas bullshit only dates back to the early 20th century.

Via Crooked Timber.