The word always makes me smile and think of the Fugs (Kupferberg and Sanders) and that (seemingly apocryphal) story about Ms Bankhead (I always heard it was Dorothy Parker) and Mailer at a party:

Quote:
"...The word has been a source of great embarrassment to me over the years because, you know, Tallulah Bankhead's press agent, many years ago, got a story in the papers which went...'Oh, hello, you're Norman Mailer,' said Tallulah Bankhead allegedly, 'You're the young man that doesn't know how to spell...' You know, the four-letter word was indicated with all sorts of asterisks... I thought she [Bankhead] should have hired a publicity man who had a better sense of fair play." (1968 Panel Discussion, CBLT-TV, Toronto, moderated by Robert Fulford) From "Conversations with Norman Mailer", 1988. Edited by J. Michael Lennon. (link)


Ceci n'est pas un seing.