Things I never thought I'd say in class

The following exchange occurred during a discussion of the Kate Chopin short story "Desiree's Baby":

Me: What do you think of Armand?

Student: He's a dick.

Me: How does he demonstrate his dickhood?

I don't know, maybe the correct term would be "dickitude" or "dickiness." I've never given much thought to the problem. It certainly never came up in any of my grad-school classes, and I don't recall encountering the term in scholarship in my field, although I would have no problem developing an extensive reading list involving such characters.

I try to keep class discussions on a certain elevated plane, but sometimes I worry that some students haven't been issued a key to the elevator. Yesterday, for instance, I asked a group of freshmen whether a certain argument was "tenable." Blank looks. Time to rephrase the question in terms they're more likely to understand...provided that one of them isn't "dickhood."