Scott Adams revealed on The Dilbert Blog yesterday that his editor has objected to a panel in an upcoming strip because a familiar four-letter word beginning with P appeared in the dialog. Want to guess?
The word was porn. Believe it or not, the recommended change was to another four-letter word, smut. A rather old-fashioned word for a character in Dilbert to use, I would have thought. Tom Lehrer wrote a wonderful song under that title, and even back then (in the sixties), the word was sort of jocular.
Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at January 24, 2006 05:36 PM