To me, this proves that the word "spue" (or spew) is never not funny, regardless of context. I'm guessing this feeling is universal, though there's a slight chance I'm just immature.
There's a guy on my team at work whose last name is "Barfuss," so he's heard hundreds of vomit euphemisms over the course of his life. From time to time our team will share our favorites as we collaborate on projects on Google Wave (which, sadly, is going away early next year--I blame the 99.9999% of you Gmail account holders who never used Wave), including earlier this week, when some all-time greats like "technicolor yawn" and "liquid laughter" came up (so to speak) in the conversation.
While puke jokes are almost universally funny, there's one vomit-related phrase I really don't like. Here's an excerpt from a blog post I wrote three years ago this month:
...the purpose of this post is to express my displeasure with the oft-used phrase (and its variants) "I just threw up in my mouth a little bit."
Apparently it's been annoying people for quite some time. But these people seem to despise the pretentiousness of the saying. It bothers me for a different reason: why say it that way, when that is the only place you can throw up? Yes, sometimes the throw up escapes the mouth and sometimes it doesn't (is there a magma/lava equivalent for puke, or is it always the same?), but the mouth is always involved. If someone ever vomits out of, say, their armpit, then I want the description to include the body part. Otherwise, it's not necessary.
One of the comments on that post included what is probably my favorite barf replacement term: "mouth squirts." Admit it, you just laughed a little in your mouth.
Anyone else have a euphemism to add to the list? Just spew it out.
Upchuck. I became fascinated with the term sometime in elementary school. It's also the reason I could never bring myself to eat at Chuck-A-Rama. It just sounds to me like you're going to have an UpChuck-A-Rama after eating there.
ReplyDelete(I did finally eat there this summer after my little sister took out her endowments. It was actually pretty good and not at all what I expected. There was no ensuing UpChuck-A-Rama.)
At the risk of gagging everyone, I do have a word to say in one of my favorite phrase's defense: The connotation of "throwing up" and "throwing up in my mouth a little bit" is so different. See, whatever was said wasn't enough to make me vomit everywhere, but just enough to get the reflux moving. It's almost worse, actually, when you think about the consequences of it just in your mouth. Ew. I've officially made it happen to me. Right now.
ReplyDeleteBut, that aside, this post made me laugh in my mouth a lot a bit. ;)