Urgent Virus Notice!

There is a dangerous virus being passed electronically, orally and by hand. This virus is called WORK. If you receive WORK from any of your colleagues, your boss or anyone else via any means do not touch it! This virus will wipe out your private life completely. If you should come into contact with WORK put your jacket on and take two good friends to the nearest pub.

Purchase the antidote known as WINE. The quickest acting is called CHARDONNAY, but this is only available for those who can afford it. The public sector equivalent is BLUE NUN. Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system. Forward this warning to five friends.

If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected with WORK, and it is controlling your life. This virus is deadly.

Update: 03.02.05; after extensive testing it has been concluded that BEER may be substituted for WINE but may require a more generous application.

Alert! Update: 25.03.05; further testing has shown that the super virus STUDYING has similar effects as the WORK virus. The same antidotes are proving successful, and other variations are also being tested. It may be that extreme antidote BRANDY may be needed to eradicate these viruses, and it is thought that ongoing applications may be needed to prevent recurrence.

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Looks like I need to work on South America, Africa and Eastern Europe...oh, and Greenland.

"Pardon My French"

Yesterday I was speaking with some friends whose wife and mother has just been diagnosed with incurable cancer. In one of those moments of not knowing quite what to say I came out with "Cancer sucks!" followed by "excuse my French". I try not to use words that would be considered obscene, and I realize that "sucks" is pretty low down on the cursing scale. But, well, cancer does suck.

Later I got to wondering about the phrase "excuse (or pardon) my French". It's sort of a strange thing to say when you think about it. A web search this morning turned up this google answers page where someone else asked the same question. The person answering the question listed several different answers she found on the web, but the jist of them seems to be that the French were (or are) considered vulgar and if you are using a curse word you are behaving as a French person would. Strange. Interestingly, in the comments, someone mentioned that they had understood it to come from the fact that the "f" word is the same word that the French use for seal. So if you said the "f" word then you would say "pardon my French" because it was in fact also a French word.

Here's how wordreference.com translates seal into French:
Principal Translations:
seal (adhesive for closing) nm sceau
seal (close, to) v fermer (enveloppe)
seal (animal) nm phoque

So, perhaps originally you only said "pardon my French" when using the "f" word and it eventually morphed into covering all curse words?