Religious Words: Barbara Shepherd and Dave Shepherd look deep within their souls–without proselytizing–as they talk about the connection between religious language and everyday language.
Religious words as they are re-appropriated into everyday life. Thanks to EJ for suggesting this topic, and letting us know about the technology evangelists. (1:58)
Howard Shepherd tells us about an interesting blog at No Thirst Software. (9:16)
Music bumper from “Faith” by Greg Federico. (14:32)
Secular shifts in meaning of some religious words (15:20)
Song: “Bad Religion” by Jimmie Bratcher (19:20)
Rude words of the week: “holy cow,” “holy Moses,” “holy smoke,” and “holy crap” (22:46)
Music bumper from “God Frequency Live” by Without Malice. (27:16)
Phrases from religion that are re-purposed in common speech (28:00)
Music courtesy of The Podsafe Music Network
Theme music by Kick the Cat
Closing music from “Grapes” by Evan Stone
time: 35:17
size: 32.3 Mb
rating: PG (Not very rude, really–although one of our Rude Words suggests another ruder word.)
References are mostly Christian, though I could have thought of some others. Next to paradise we could have had Mecca in a similar meaning; some place being the ultimate spot for a certain experience.
The rude word of the week made me think of: Holy cannoli! I thought that was rather common…
The use of religiously associated words sort of erodes the load. I can see this especially clear if I literally translate some common Hebrew, rather day-to-day phrases in secular Israel into English or the even more secular Dutch. If you ask someone ‘What’s up’, in Israel, you may get, even from secular people, an answer that is the equivalent of: Praise the Lord, or: God be blessed. It doesn’t make you sound half as orthodox and observant as it looks.
http://anneisaman.blogspot.com/2007/11/religious-words.html
I don’t mean to be difficult, but Harry Caray was the announcer in baseball who first used “holy cow” while narrating games. Caray made this a habit to prevent curse words from escaping.
Yes, it does appear that Harry Caray used “holy cow” first. Since I grew up on the East Coast of the U.S., however, and lived for a few years in New York, Phil Rizzuto’s voice was the one that came to my mind. I don’t believe I said that Rizzuto was the very first to use that expression, but if I did, I stand corrected.
I have to agree with Anne, that the words used were mostly Christian. No words that are attributed to other religions (besides generic words such as “faith,” etc.) jump to mind so that is something I would have liked to hear more of in this episode.
I also took a class in college called “Heroes, Saints, and Martyrs” and we discussed the misappropriation of the word faith and how it’s used so casually. We say we have faith in just about anything these days. Just something I wanted to mention.
I really enjoyed this episode. When you talked about evangelism, I started thinking about comments that I have previously made about Mac Users. I always say that Apple does not have customers, it has converts. I often refer to Mac users as Macvangelists, because I have never met a Mac user that was not trying to convert everyone else to use a Mac.
Anyway, keep up the great work, I really enjoy the podcast!