Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Via various posters on Facebook today, country singer Marty Robbins performing his own gospel song “Kneel and Let the Lord Take Your Load” (1953) — meant earnestly and reverently, but eliciting reactions ranging from raised eyebrows to laughter and shock at the unsavory and sacrilegious potential of the word load in the title. The single:

(#1) You can listen to this recording here

The load in the song. This sense from NOAD:

noun load: … 2 … [c] a burden of responsibility, worry, or grief: consumers will find it difficult to service their heavy load of debt.

The song implores you to let the Lord relieve you of the burden of temptation to evil. The complete lyrics (with chord changes for the musically inclined):

(#2)

About the singer/songwriter. From Wikipedia:

Martin David Robinson (September 26, 1925 – December 8, 1982), known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, and NASCAR racing driver. Robbins was one of the most popular and successful country and western singers for most of his nearly four-decade career, which spanned from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. He was also an early outlaw country pioneer.

The senses of load that tend to raise eyebrows. GDoS on the noun load  has a large collection of slang senses, roughly 20; a selection of senses (in bold face) that might be evoked by take your load:

… 3 as an abbreviation of ‘load of rubbish’, ‘load of nonsense‘, ‘load of shit‘ etc. … [specifically] (c) (orig. US) utter nonsense; a prevarication [as in That’s a load, man] … 4 in context of the body or bodily fluids … (a) (US) faeces, a bowel movement [esp. in the phrase dump a / one’s load] … (c) (US) an ejaculation of semen or an orgasm (of either sex) [as in Take my load, baby! and in phrases like blow / bust / shoot one’s load] …

These senses have load used as crude slang for reference (or allusion) to taboo material, but in such uses, load is not itself a taboo item, nor is it a euphemism (quite the contrary); but like meat for reference to the penis, it’s rude. (There is no doubt a term for words so used, but I don’t know it.)

This entry was posted on June 15, 2023 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Abbreviation, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Music, Taboo language and slurs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.