For some reason, I was thinking about this as I was going to bed last night:
I learned in my cognitive psychology class eons ago that the more important or common a construct is for a society, the more words they will have for that construct. For example, Eskimos have a bazillion different words for “snow” since that is something so central to their daily life. So this got me thinking about the United States and what constructs we have a myriad of words for (though a lot of them are slang).
I decided probably the most common one is sex. Though I will not repeat any slang terms, euphemisms, or phrases here, you can pick your own brain and understand how sort of creepy it is that we have so many words for this act. One of the other most common constructs, in a similar vein, I think are probably the male and female genitalia.
The other big ones:
Money – cash, change, dollars, bills, coins, bucks, greenbacks, tender, moolah, bread, dough, cash-money, G’s, grand, stash, loot, wad, lettuce, smackers, chump change, Benjamins… and the list goes on…
Alcohol – booze, sauce, moonshine, toddy, nightcap, brew, brewsky, spirits, fire water, libation…
I think one ray of hope in this list is this one:
Mother—mom, mommy, momma, mama, ma, mammy, ma’am, mum, mummy
Yeah, I probably need to find other ways to fall asleep!