Just when you thought it was safe to open your ears and listen to the youth of today, the youngsters have managed to come up with a new four-letter word.

It's a vile, vulgar word that is certain to blaze a path to Hell for everyone less than two decades old.

Forget about all the other curse words and obscenities which have reddened the faces of grandmothers and given fodder to clergy over the years.

Even drunken sailors and hard-core truck drivers are sure to be too timid to use this offensive piece of language.

This one is gargantuan.

It is so horrid that one high school principal in Danvers, Mass. was recently forced to actually contact the parents of every student in his school with a recorded message, warning them that students caught using the word while on school property would be suspended.

The utterance of this wicked word would result in a permanent blot on their educational record, the kids to be branded forever as uncouth filth mongers.

In fact, this word is so depraved that I risk my future as the editor of a small town newspaper lest I allow those four letters to appear in print.

However, my dedication to dispensing the truth demands that I use that Satanic curse word in this column, strictly for educational purposes in order to protect my readers from the spiritual damage this colloquialism could cause if heard unprepared.

So here it is, the despicable, unutterable expression of foul language:

Meep.

That's right, meep.

Looking for a definition of this vulgarity?

Don't bother checking Websters.

In fact, as I type this, Microsoft Word continues to underline the obscenity with the squiggly red line which means the word isn't in its extensive spell-checking vocabulary.

It is a word without official meaning.

Even if you are fortunate enough to encounter a youngster who is familiar with the word, someone who uses it as a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, sometimes all in the same sentence, they won't be able to define it for you.

In fact, it appears there is only one being on the entire planet who can actually clarify the word's meaning with any accuracy.

That person?

Beaker.

No, not "Bleeker" from the hit movie Juno.

Beaker, the science Muppet.

The expletive is the only word that particular Muppet seems capable of uttering, and he utters it with frequency and passion.

But according to Danvers High School Principal Thomas Murray, the word is not to be tolerated.

Newspapers and TV stations on the East coast have been reporting on the furor caused by the principal's decision to ban the word.

According to statements in the news attributed to Murray, the word was deemed taboo because students were using it repeatedly to disrupt classes, and were preparing to use it for a planned mass disruption.

Obviously, Murray's school doesn't teach "irony" in its English classes, leaving the principal clueless as to the irony of banning a word at a school in the state where the American Revolution and the idea of freedom was born.

It's one thing to maintain order and discipline in the classroom.

It's another to unilaterally deem a particular, meaningless, harmless word as bad, and arbitrarily censor its use.

It appears that the principal has also failed to attend any of the school's history classes, since history is rife with examples of bad people who tried to control his underlings by stifling their use of certain words.

The principal should have found a better way to maintain order.

Which is why Murray should meeping go meep himself.