Are we still not doing “phrasing”?

Forgive the shameless Archer reference. What I want to talk about is word choice, but it was too good to pass up.

After she read After Life Lessons, my mother had a few things to say. She had some helpful criticisms, some thoughts, and then: “You know, I don’t like the word cock.”

This was immediately followed by a conversation about how there are no good words for male anatomy, so “cock,” as it stands, was about as good as we could get it. (Phrasing!) We went through several variations over wi...