This thread reminds me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago. I have 2 good guy friends that are in their sixties who have preteen boys. I'm in my thirties and I deal with hundreds if not thousands of college age kids every week. A lot of times my older guy friends will bring up something one of their sons has said and ask me about it.
One of them came to me and told me that him and his boy had gotten into an argument over a word the boy had said. The boy had argued it was not a bad word. I finally got my friend to tell me the word, he was embarrassed to say it. The word was gay.
I told old him that the word had changed and it no longer was offensive and has a totally different meaning. I told him I deal with many homosexual college kids and that's not how the word is used anymore. He told me he still didn't like the word and was not going to let his kids use the word. It's his kids, if that's what he wants to teach them so be it.
When I was a kid, funky was popular. My mother taught me it was a bad word. To this day I will not use the word. I do understand some 4 letters words are very offensive, but it is interesting that different generations view a word to have totally different meanings.
