A word that daren't speak its name

Harry G. Frankfurt is an emeritus philosophy professor at Princeton University. His books include the well-received ''The Reasons of Love" (''a pleasure to read" -- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews) and ''The Importance of What We Care About." But his latest book is his first to appear on a national bestseller list. It is called ''On ________."

Frankfurt defines ________ as ''a lack of concern for the difference between truth and falsity. A _________er is not necessarily a liar; what he says may very well be true, and he may not think that it is false. I was careful to try to make clear the differences between _________ers and liars."

He explains these subtleties and others in a video press release posted on the Princeton University Press website:

Q: ''Can you give us any salient examples today of ________? Not that you're just a walking '________ meter,' which is actually an expression that some people use, but can you give us some working examples that people might be familiar with?"

A: ''I can think of one, but I'm a little bit hesitant because I don't want to get into political controversies. I was thinking of Senator Kerry's representing himself as qualified to be commander in chief because he had served courageously on a swift boat during the Vietnamese war, as if courage in the context of a battlefield situation has anything at all to do with the kind of judgment and discrimination that's required for making the kind of large-scale strategic and tactical decisions that a commander in chief would be called on to make. I think that all this stuff about a band of brothers and how courageous I was and how heroically I performed that was all a lot of ________."

By now, you are wondering: What exactly is ________? Apparently, it is a word that can be the title of a book published by a prestigious academic press but that cannot appear in a family newspaper. It is a word that Jon Stewart can say on late-night TV but that Comedy Central had to excise from Stewart's Harry Frankfurt interview when it was rebroadcast during the day.

The word was bleeped out on public radio and will probably be edited out of a forthcoming ''60 Minutes" interview with Frankfurt. The New York Times inserted several hyphens in the title when writing about the book. I'm not even going to spot you the first letter, although I will give you this hint: The value of the Scrabble tiles would add up to 13.

As it happens, Professor Frankfurt's slender 80-page book is not the only current tome addressing this all-consuming subject. Laura Penny, a former bookstore clerk and union organizer, is about to publish her own contribution to the field: ''Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About ________." That familiar phrase is classic ________, as are the equally recognizable: ''This is just a survey; we're not selling anything;" ''I'm a reporter. Your secret is safe with me;" or ''No, really: I'm interested in what you have to say."

Once you start looking, there is a lot of ________ around. Here is a clip from the Harvard Crimson, reporting on the remarkable coincidence that landed the yappomatic Alan Dershowitz in the middle of a media scrum following Wednesday's contentious faculty meeting:

''Outside the Faculty meeting, Professor Alan M. Dershowitz -- who, as a member of the Law School faculty, was not invited to yesterday's session -- mingled with members of the press on the street in front of the Loeb Drama Center.

''The idea that you vote to censure, it's just not what you should be doing," said Dershowitz, who said he had been walking through the neighborhood with his family and stumbled on the meeting." (Emphasis added.)

What he says may well be true, to cite Frankfurt's careful definition. Which is why it sounds like ________ to me.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.