Apparently M&S refused to send a message to someone's friend Dick because it was a 'rude' word! Similarly, someone received flowers via the M&S service and the card read 'With love from Steve, Kerry and the cat (name too rude to print).' (letters to the Daily Telegraph). Tom, Dick and Harry all know that when calling the cat you either yell 'puss, puss, puss' or kitty, kitty, kitty.' But Kitty may also refer to Katherine and of course Tom is Thomas, Dick is Richard and Harry is Harold or Henry. Surely Dick Whittington (later Sir Richard Whittington Lord Mayor of London) called his cat a clever puss when she caught all those rats!
Sadly this kind of ignorance is perpetuated by our media. Looking up Dick on the web did not give me the usual ie short version of Richard but various sexist interpretations, so the politician Richard Cheney was called Dick for other reasons than his name (whether or no there was any truth in this assumption).
I mourn the loss of the word 'gay' to mean happy or joyful, a word in use for centuries- goes with 'gaiety', 'gaily'
'And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
is bonny and blithe and good and --?'
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