My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

Kraus’s aphorism casts everyday language as something debased by constant public use—especially by journalism, politics, and cliché—until it becomes a “common prostitute.” Against that degradation, he imagines the writer’s task as an act of purification: through exactness, moral seriousness, and stylistic rigor, the author can restore words to freshness and integrity, turning them “into a virgin.” The shock value of the sexual metaphor is characteristic of Kraus’s polemical style and underscores his belief that linguistic corruption is not merely aesthetic but ethical: when language is cheapened, thought and public life are cheapened with it.