The most offensive word in the English language

There's an English word so offensive that people stopped using it hundreds of years ago, and the last time people tried saying it to the wrong people, they were burned at the stake for it.  Or  if they got a more merciful judge, they simply got thrown in jail or had their tongues cut out.  It's so offensive and so strictly taboo that many people don't even know what the word really means.  It's so offensive that it's best to avoid using even the polite substitute or a foreign translation.  Or a foreign translation of the polite substitute.  In other words, it's not the word itself that's the problem, but the idea behind the word, in any language.

First let's consider the English word itself, and next we'll consider polite substitutes and why even those are best avoided.  Are you ready for the word yet?  

That's the word.  

Now somebody reading this is probably thinking, "Is she crazy?  What's rude about that word? It's in the Bible, for #$%&'s sake!"  As if everything in the Bible were morally pure and G-rated.  Some of us in one of my on-line English majors and literature lovers groups had a discussion about this issue a few years back, and somebody even said she was once criticized in church for praying with the word "you" instead of "thou" because, according to the criticizer's opinion, "thou" is more respectful than "you."  
Whatever my friend's critic's knowledge of the Bible may be, his understanding of English grammar has some weaknesses.  Why the King James Bible and some prayerbooks use the singular form is a question for another day.  

Once upon a time, every language, including English, had two classes of pronouns for the second person.  Spanish even has three.  Now English is the only language that uses only one set of second person pronouns  Thou was a singular pronoun, the old English equivalent of the French, Italian, Latin, Romanian, or Spanish tu, the German, Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian du, the Icelandic þú, the Polish, Czech, and Slovak ty, the Russian ты, the Bulgarian and Macedonian ти, the Greek σύ, the Hebrew אתה, and the Arabic أنت, which people in all those other languages use to address a close acquaintance or social equal.  You is actually a plural form, the English equivalent of vous, vosotros, vos, vobis, voi, Sie, wy, вы, אתם, etc., which, in every language but English, people use for more than one person or for strangers or people to whom they need to show respect.  People who still want a separate plural pronoun have settled on you-all or youse.  

 If anyone still needs convincing, just consider that other famous English writer active around the time the change happened, William Shakespeare.  Consider how many people Juliet was addressing  when she said:

Just one Romeo.  Actually, it wasn't even that many people, because technically, she was thinking aloud to herself, and she didn't realize he was there under her balcony listening to her.  Now consider how many people Mark Antony was addressing when he said:

 A whole forum full of Romans.