"Tom was�funny, wasn't he?" One doesn't hear "funny" spoken quite that way any more. So many more explicit words have come into use that anyone now resorting to funny, even with the twist he gave it, would fail to make himself understood.

Even then I pretend not to get it. "How do you mean?" I said.

He looked at me reproachfully, as if it were rude of me to make him say it. "Tom never married."

"That's not unusual. A lot of the faculty here �"

"A lot of the faculty here are pansies."

I should have let him stick with funny. Really, of all the names for us, I like pansies least.