“sexy“

People have different reactions to different words. “Smash Box” cosmetics must’ve seemed like a great idea to a marketing manager somewhere (“We’ve got to convey being out of the box and different and new. Why don’t we smash the box! It’s brilliant”). But to someone more, well, frankly, puerile, it takes on an entirely different meaning. (Warning: Urban Dictionary, may or may not be safe for work, depending on how draconian your workplace is about cursewords)

“Sexy” is another interesting case. Personally I use it to describe anything that is particularly nice or attractive, and along with “Epic”, it forms James‘ entire repertoire of adjectives. However, there are a few family members who look at me sideways when I describe a piece of computer equipment in this manner, maintaining that it should only be pulled into service when describing the attractiveness of a potential mate.

One of our customers recently sent me an instant message:

btw… I reset the other day my password for my account and it emailed me the following pw “asshole2342″… quite funny

(Alain, it should be noted, is particularly awesome)

The source of the trouble was the sexy_temp_passwords Rails plugin I had installed. Its word list included, among other things, “penis” and “virgin”.

Now, you can giggle, but some people might not. We thought it safer to replace the word list with a list from a less controversial source.

Watch your wordlists carefully folks. And check Urban Dictionary before you name your company.