ABSTRACT
The English facility in their own language for flippancy or superciliousness is well known; and, to be sure, it is not confined to the written word and the newspaper culture. It would take us too far afield to take up here the verbal trickery of the Cockney skill at "back-rhyming" or the secretive argot of the kind which Anthony Burgess perfected for A Clockwork Orange. The story in the Independent was written by the "Health Editor"; had it been assigned to the "Language Editor" we might have had several richer examples of acronyms touching on more intimate diagnoses: viz., Bonking Might Help (BMH) or, alternatively, Shagging Threatens Cardiac Arrest (STCA). Acronyms are too private, and lack the verbal power to break taboos. Synonyms are too anodyne, and prove to be limp and impotent for the macho task at hand.
