Warning: This blog contains profanity, like the “ph-word”—phooey—and its descendant, the more straightforward “f-word.” When my mother was a kid, back in the first half of the 20th century, she and her schoolgirl friends used to camouflage their curses with Latin. Latin? They conjugated the verb “to be”: “Sum, esse, PHOOEY!!! futurus.” You can almost...