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| Headline | The four letter word in "A Poem On The Underground Wall" |
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| Author | Comment |
ivalo
Feb-18-2005, 14:24 GMT
IP:
Finland
 | A Poem On The Underground Wall contains the line "a single worded poem consisting of four letters".
I heard somewhere that the phrase "four letter word" means God for the Jewish. (Jahve contains four letters when written in Hebrew.)
Then there´s also that Joan Baez song (written by Bob Dylan - another Jew) "Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word".
So is this true? I find it quite interesting. (I bet everybody knew this already...) |
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bill
Feb-18-2005, 16:19 GMT
IP:
USA - United Staates America
 | hi, is paul coming out with a new cd soon? |
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Lekornee
Feb-18-2005, 16:40 GMT
IP:
USA - United Staates America
| In English many "bad words" are four letters long, like f***, s*** so that´s what it means. A swear word. |
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Marieno
Feb-18-2005, 18:10 GMT
IP:
France
 | Depends on my mood: sometimes, i think to "Love", sometimes to "fuck"...:-) |
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Nathgertsch
Feb-18-2005, 18:21 GMT
IP:
France
| lol ! MarieNo, I´m shocked ! ;-) |
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io
Feb-18-2005, 18:34 GMT
IP:
Italy
 | As Art said when he introduced this song in concert, the 4letter word is f**k..
just for the Wednesday Morning 3 AM cover story.
but of course there might be other meanings |
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ivalo
Feb-18-2005, 20:54 GMT
IP:
Finland
| I think the swear word would be too obvious. Yeah, I guess it can mean anything. |
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Jack
Feb-18-2005, 23:06 GMT
IP:
USA - United Staates America
| In the early sources of the Hexateuch (the first 6 books of the Old Testimate), God is consitently referred to by what is known as the Tetragrammaton, which are four hebrew letters which are transliterated as YHWH, or JHVH, or Yahweh and Jehovah. Jews do not speak these names aloud, so they do use the phrase ´four-letter word´ to refer to Yahweh.
This is not the phrasing of that line in ´Poem´, and sense it is not a rhyming line, it doesn´t seem too likely Paul would have changed it for effect.
Also, in English, four-letter word of course means one of the short, vulgar words we are fond of using. I´ve always thought of the word being a swear word, and I think, given what others have said, that this is what it is supposed to be. This is still a very interesting observation. |
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Johnny
Feb-23-2005, 10:05 GMT
IP:
Germany
 | Nope, he definetly means the swear word with "f". Artie is telling the story of the song at the 1967 New York show.
The cover of Wednesday Morning 3AM shows S&G in a New York underground station. They took about 500 pictures for that cover but when they left Artie noticed that the four-letter word was on the wall right behind him and it was visible on all pics. So they had to go there once again to get an appropriate picture.
Later, it inspired Paul to write "A poem..." |
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mnc
Feb-24-2005, 11:49 GMT
IP:
Norway
 | as Art called it, "the Old suggestion" |
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BingFrisby
Feb-24-2005, 18:05 GMT
IP:
United Kingdom
 | Refer to the solo Simon recording "The Northern Line " for the answer. |
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Richard
Feb-25-2005, 06:40 GMT
IP:
USA - United Staates America
| In English, most swear words are four letters long (shit, damn, fuck, hell). So we say "four letter word" to mean a bad word.
Art has said that the inspiration for the song was "the Old familiar suggestion" written on a subway wall, so the word in the song is most likely f-u-c-k.
Hope this helps. |
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