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It’s been a long time since my George Carlin phase — that late-‘70s period when we kids would listen to LP “records” (stuff like “Class Clown” and “Occupation: Foole”) by the bearded bard of filthy words — seven of them, to be exact, which you could never say on television, he would inform us, and proved it by getting his routine barred from radio and TV, and hauling down hefty FCC fines in the days before Janet Jackson’s breast exposure.

(For old time’s sake, the seven words are: S**t, p*ss, f**k, c**t, c**ks**er, m***erf***er and t*ts. “And t*ts doesn’t even belong on the list,” Carlin protested. “It’s such a friendly-sounding word.”)

But Carlin, who died recently of heart failure at age 71, was never really about using bad language, per se; he was simply about language. He was the William Safire of standup comedy, writing routines that dissected oxymorons (“words that don’t go together, like ‘military intelligence’ and ‘jumbo shrimp’”) while questioning our clichés, and he never took for granted the words and phrases that were handed down to us every single day.

He started out as a straight-laced comic in the mid-‘60s, then dropped the “straight” and adopted his trademark hippie garb: beard, ponytail, denim jacket or T-shirt onstage. And he laced his act with counterculture humor, drug jokes, and a tone that questioned authority. Yet he always seemed like an elder statesman of the hippie generation, gently reminding his audience not to buy into the scene too much.

Sometime in the mid-‘80s, George Carlin lost relevance to me, but not to a new audience that embraced his next transformation — into a crusty, white-bearded old guy who said whatever he felt like, curse words and all. He seemed almost reactionary in this new phase, an armchair coot, pissed off by — well, by everything: religion, liberalism, environmentalism, etc. So the humor felt less inclusive.

But a visit to YouTube the other day reminded me that Carlin was still very sharp, very funny, even until the end. His routine on death (try typing search words “George Carlin” and “RIP” and you should find it) stands as a kind of memorial comedy site to Carlin: you sit before the video stream and laugh out loud, remembering, “Yeah, that guy was funny…”

He starts by saying he’s got a new hobby: “Going through my address book and crossing out the dead people.” But you can’t do it too soon, he tells the audience. You can’t rush home after the funeral and scrub them out right away; you have to wait a while. “I have a rule of thumb: six weeks. Six extra weeks in the book, on the house, on me.”

He then dissects the many clichés that surface when somebody dies. “Hey, did you hear Phil Davis died?” “Phil Davis? I just saw him yesterday…”

Carlin’s snappy answer to this stupid comment: “Yeah? Well, it didn’t help. He died anyway. Apparently, the simple act of your seeing him didn’t slow his cancer down. It may even have made it more aggressive.”

Or this typical cliché, usually delivered to a surviving spouse: “If there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask...”

“You know what you tell a guy like that who wants to help? ‘Well, fine, why don’t you come over this weekend, you can paint the garage. Bring your chainsaw and pickaxe, we’re going to put your ass to work.’ He wants to help? F**k him, call his bluff.”

Another thing people say to the surviving spouse: “I’m keeping him in my thoughts.” Carlin’s response: “Where? Where in your thoughts are you keeping him, exactly?”

Another comforting cliché: “You know, I lost my father...”

Snappy answer: “Ah, he’ll turn up. Have you checked the dumpster out back? He used to like to take a nap in there.”

In this 10-minute bit, Carlin also pokes fun at this warm-and-fuzzy sentiment, usually delivered at the reception after a burial: “You know, I think he’s up there now, smiling down on us…”

Carlin wonders: “Why do people assume their loved ones are ‘up there’? Why is it nobody says, ‘I think he’s down there, smiling up at us.’ Apparently it never occurs to anybody that their loved ones may be in Hell.”

For obvious reasons, this routine is patently offensive to Catholics. Yet, it does what Carlin was always committed to doing: it makes us look at the things we say, the words we use, whether through choice or through laziness. In a way, it shows Carlin was a successor to George Orwell, who wrote 1984 in part to demonstrate the danger of accepting government-approved language.

In this day and age, it almost seems quaint to speak of “seven words you can’t say on television.” What isn’t allowed on TV, after all, in the age of cable, dwindling network audiences and the all-pervasive competition of an Internet that never, ever says “no” to anything? Yet Carlin’s point about language still has sharp relevance, because we’re still being fed language by our political leaders, still being asked to imbibe and process statements that rewrite reality every single day, turning on its head Orwell’s famous admonition: “Let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around.”

I’ll remember Carlin as an articulate humorist and occasional film actor (he was Bill and Ted’s underworld guide in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its memorably titled sequel, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, and he turned up in Kevin Smith’s Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, among other roles). And, as someone who also takes a professional interest in words, in the phrases that somehow creep into language, I found his humor refreshing and eye-opening. (Or is that just another obituary cliché?) Whatever, I’m sure Carlin’s looking down — or through us — right now, if he cares to take a look, and smiling.