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Comment by falsestprophet | Hacker News Reader

You may want to avoid using the word "sucks" in a professional context because there is a population of people for whom the word evokes the idea of oral sex. Try substituting "is not so good." This will have the added virtue of being super charming in your German accent.

edit: I usually don't bitch about being downmodded. But don't you guys know any old people? And know that old people tend to be in charge of things? In any event, you shouldn't rely upon business leaders of any age being ignorant of the language.

-http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sucks 5. Vulgar Slang To perform fellatio on.

-suck, Old English sucan, corresponding to Latine sugere "to suck." It's of imitative origin. Meaning "do fellatio" is first recorded 1928.

-Slang sense of "be contemptible" first attested 1971

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Here's the thing: Sure. "Old people" exist. They are often in charge of things. Many of them read blogs and surf the internet. Do you really, honestly think that somebody who surfs the internet and reads blogs, especially blogs about video encoding, won't be aware of the current meaning of the word?

Honestly?

You see the word "sucks", in the context of something not being very good, everywhere. Literally everywhere. I bet that if you googled any tech-related keyword, somewhere in the first ten results, "sucks" would be employed in the context of "is not so good".

My point is this: People that read that blog post _will_ know what "sucks" means in that context and will not infer anything sexual from it - and even if they did, it's hardly the end of the world. Surely nobody who spends any reasonable amount of time reading blogs about video encoding will be in the slightest offended by fellatio. After all, "old people" are no different to "young people" except they have more experiences under their belt (hyuk hyuk).

Luckily, centenarians aren't typically in the market for buffered video encoding vendors.

Since when has the word "sucks" evoked that?

Since before it hung out with the hip words.

I remember the difference happening about 12 years ago, though my neighborhood was probably behind the times somewhat. I remember that some of my fellow 7th graders and I were used to the old meaning, but it wasn't too hard to transition to the new one since we didn't really use it much anyway. Also, I remember a trailer for Bicentennial Man (1999) using the more "evocative" meaning.

Sure we know old people who may be offended by that word. But how many of those old people will be reading this blog post?

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