Words you've never heard Tom say

The shock in this story isn't that an Irish MP dropped the f-bomb in Parliament. (Well, I suppose it would shock me if I didn't throw two F's, an MF and an SF or two before I've even left the house in the morning.) The shock is that they have a list of banned words and fuck is not on it. Among the words that are: "Brat; buffoon; chancer; communist; corner boy; coward; fascist; gurrier; guttersnipe; hypocrite; rat; scumbag; scurrilous; and yahoo." Also "handbagging."

How bad is Congress' handbagging epidemic? Manageable, it would seem.

There are thousands of instances of "communist" in the Congressional Record this decade, but they tend to be dry policy references. Likewise, of the 22 instances of "brat," only six are the unspeakably offensive variety and none are direct verbal assaults.

All but four refs to "Yahoo" are the uppercase Yahoo -- two are outbursts of excitement and only two are about actual yahoos. "Buffoon" appears twice, but one of those is a quote and the other is about Hugo Chavez. "Scumbag" is in there twice, referring to corporate thieves and predatory lenders. "Guttersnipe" has not been heard in either chamber since 1994, when Bob Dornan quoted Churchill on Hitler.

"Canker" is listed more than 100 times. I expected to find a bunch of medical uses, but the overwhelming majority are botanical: "citrus canker." There is an interesting metaphorical one: a reference to a letter written by Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter that touches on the "canker of slavery." (I wondered if she meant "cancer," but no, a longer excerpt shows she committed to the metaphor: "The canker of slavery eats into our hearts, and diseases the whole body by this ulcer at the core.")

"Coward" and "hypocrite" both chart in the triple digits. "Scurrilous" is in the high double digits (I've always felt this word had a special kinship with "knave," so imagine my sadness to find out those two appear together only once, and not in combination).

Want to waste your own time looking up naughty words in the Congressional Record? Click here.