Every second word

[Glizdka]

This comes from yours truly. I said that to a person who was cursing like a sailor.

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You say fuck every second word.

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I know that English uses other to mean an alternating pattern. I'd probably use other instead, but it was an impulse from me because of the intensity of the situation. Polish uses ordinal numbers (equivalents of first and second) to mean other, another, former, latter, and I guess my inner Pole took over.

What surprised me was that the person I was talking to perfectly understood what I meant. Is that because every "every second [item]" could mean the same as "every other [item]"?

 

[Rover_KE]

They mean the same to me.

 

[jutfrank]

second is a perfectly natural alternative to other in this context, yes.

The grammar of the sentence is not strictly right, however, as you shouldn't really use every other/second word as an adverbial.

It does sound natural as it is, though, and it seemed to do the job perfectly well.

 

[Skrej]

By extension, in theory you could change the frequency to any number - every third/fourth/fifth word, etc. I sometimes like to say 'every third word', just for the alliteration.

Of course, saying every other/every second word is hyperbole anyway, so the statement starts to lose its efficacy if it's not so frequent as to seem if there are just a few words between repetition. Plus you start to sound odd for suggesting you're counting their words so closely.

I can't remember the name of the book or the series now, but I do still recall some rather funny dialogue between a character who cursed profusely, and a stern matronly figure who chastised him for it. The strain of avoiding profanity in her presence nearly gave him a stroke, so in an effort to acknowledge his attempts at cleaning up his language in her presence, the woman suggested maybe he could just reduce the frequency, and limit it one word every other sentence. While she was of course not being literal, he took it literally and the dialogue continued with him cursing one word per every second sentence, for several pages. The woman makes a comment to herself that she can almost hear him mentally counting which sentences he kept clean and which he cursed.

Much to my delight, whenever the character wasn't in the presence of that woman, every sentence he spoke contained multiple profanities, but for the rest of the book, whenever they shared a scene (and as they were major characters they had several), he went back to counting his swears.

I thought it was some rather amusing yet dedicated writing, and wondered how many times the author had to edit and re-write those pages to literally have every other sentence from the guy contain profanity. I actually got a bit distracted from the story because I started counting every time it happened, just to see how long the author maintained the farce. I'd read it once to count, then again for the story. As far as I could tell, the author maintained the gag accurately not only throughout the book, but through a couple of books in the series until the cursing character was killed off.

I just hope I wasn't the only reader who actually counted....:lol:

 

[Glizdka]

What a great story, Skrej. It's too bad you can't remember the name. I'd definitely read it.

The frequency of 30 bpm produces a beat every second second every minute.