Today, I got up and took a shower. Not extraordinary, I know. But hear this: I was, for the first time, able to just stand there, letting the unending flow of hot water–thanks to my 22g’s dropped to Belmont yearly–bathe my waking body. It was wondermous.
Onto today’s topic: I was just thinking last night, lying in bed, that being called a prude might not be such a bad thing. Now, don’t think for a minute that my thoughts revolve around myself being called a prude. I doubt I have been called a prude recently, if ever. My thoughts were just that, hypothetically, if someone says, “Oh, you’re such a prude,” it might not be a terribly derogatory statement. Let’s examine my thoughts…
A prude can be defined, and not to my satisfaction, as “a person excessively concerned about propriety and decorum.” I believe that this is merely one definition. On researching the past of this word, apparently it used to have a noble past. Prude for some time meant “wise woman”, but the French (surprise?) screwed it up. They thought a woman could be too wise. Prude was a shortened form of prude femme, a word modeled after preudomme, “a man of experience and integrity.”
Let’s take the simplistic view that a prude is someone who is prudent. That is defined as…
1) careful and sensible; marked by sound judgment;
2) showing wise self-restraint in speech and behavior especially in preserving prudent silence;
So… when someone is calling another person a prude, what is he essentially saying? “You’re so careful and sensible! You make sound judgments, and show wise self-restraint in your speech and behavior!” Hardly sounds like a term of reproach to me.
What spawned my admittedly unmerited research into this word was the thought that came to me last night: I’m sure that, in a group of puppy kickers and baby eaters, anyone who refrained might be called a prude.
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