taboo

Like any time we have taboo topics or taboo-like scenarios different from the “norm” we get really precious about it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 2, 2026

In China jokes about Mao, the country's founding leader who died in 1976, are considered disrespectful and remain a social taboo.

From Barron's ● Oct. 27, 2026

"Menstrual health is still treated as a taboo... I would like to see free menstrual products in schools," Laazouzi says.

From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026

“A confluence of forces is leading to certain actions and choices that were considered taboo before now becoming acceptable and even celebrated, and then they spread via social contagion.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026

“Tell me, what archaic sanitary taboo have I violated? I suspect that it’s some falsification on the part of the inspector.”

From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

In appointing Ancelotti, Brazil confronted one of the biggest taboos in their football history: the national team being led by a foreign coach.

From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026

“I think when you are making a film that is confronting one of the ultimate taboos in cinema, you’re going to have a tough time,” he says.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2026

EU industry chief Stephane Sejourne celebrated the EU nuclear pivot Tuesday saying Brussels dared "to break certain taboos".

From Barron's ● Mar. 10, 2026

But to remain globally competitive, Chinese companies also incorporate materials from foreign websites, such as Wikipedia, that address taboos such as the Tiananmen Square massacre.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2025

‘Hey, I don’t know. Some Cherokee taboos were permanent no-no’s, like killing eagles.’

From "Blood of Olympus" by Rick Riordan

At the Harvard College library, the only copy was removed from the shelves “and kept under lock and key with other tabooed books,” Justin Kaplan wrote in “Walt Whitman. A Life.”

From Washington Post ● Apr. 30, 2022

Despite being one of the world’s favorite food categories — both nutritionally complete and widely considered tasty — meat is also the most tabooed food across many cultures.

From New York Times ● Dec. 27, 2021

He walks around that tabooed subject more carefully than a cat around a saucer of cream.

From Time Magazine Archive

Result: "Concern about death," says the University of Southern California's Psychologist Herman Feifel, "has been relegated to the tabooed territory heretofore occupied by diseases like tuberculosis and cancer, and the topic of sex."

From Time Magazine Archive

Discussion of the island was, ,by mutual consent, tabooed.

From "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie

Social reformers and temperance agitators could not make a greater mistake than by following the example of the Puritans and tabooing all pleasures.

From Chopin and Other Musical Essays by Henry Theophilus Finck

But that's always the way in tabooing societies.

From The British Barbarians by Grant Allen

By tabooing all difference of opinion we have eliminated all zest from our intercourse. 

From Tea-Table Talk by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

It is not unusual to find, on such occasions, a special clause, in the conveyance, for their protection, and for the perpetual tabooing of the place of sepulture.

From Dealings with the Dead, Volume I (of 2) by A Sexton of the Old School

But I can't lose a day of this wonder, and fortunately dear Aunt Ann never dreams of tabooing my sight-seeing.

From Against Odds A Detective Story by Lawrence L. Lynch