Tuesday, October 15, 2013

We're Totally Fed up (and what that connotes)

The latest article on Al Jazeera English about the current stagnation of our government has a really great photograph from Reuters that should not be missed. It shows people protesting the stalemate; and, like all good protesters, these happen to be making their points with placards. One of those placards has the text "We're Totally Fed up," distributed across three lines beginning, respectively with the capital letters W, T, and F. What makes this particularly amusing is that the photograph was taken from an angle that obscures the F, suggesting that the Reuters photographer knew full well the generally accepted meaning of WTF. I am not sure why Reuters chose to be discrete about this, particularly since, back in 2010, to my great delight, I reported that "WTF" had been granted a place in the Oxford English Dictionary. Perhaps Al Jazeera English is more sensitive about these matters than the OED is, and what appeared on the Web page had to do with their own selection, rather than the photographer's.

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