Thing To Have Today: scruples.

 'I do have scruples.'

'I'm sorry to hear that. Is it painful?'

Where are the gags of yesteryear? Sometimes I find myself longing for the days when comedy was simple and happy and...

...well, funny.

Still.

To have scruples is to have small but persistent doubts about the morality of a course of action.

As with Music Hall-style comedy, scruples have been washed away in a great modern flood. With Music Hall the deluge was made up of cinema and then TV (with their lack of a real-life audience to give performers instant, painful proof if they did things wrong); and with scruples it is social media. 

Or asocial media, as it should perhaps be called.

The thing about scruples is that they involve working out a moral position which isn't the prevailing or obvious option - and, yes, the word death-wish does come to mind.

The Word Den, as a responsible organ, cannot recommend scruples as a safe means of expression.

But it has a deep nostalgia and respect for them, all the same.

Thing To Have Today: scruples. This word comes from the Latin scrūpulus, a small weight, from scrūpus, a rough stone.

a two-scruple apothecary's weight (2.6 grams), from before 1900, The Royal Institution of Cornwall