In a famous paper on phonology R. Jakobson made an example of an English minimal triplet as follows:
pop ~ tot ~ cock
By this example he wanted to show that syllable onset and coda positions produce different realisations of the occlusives, but these realisations are just positional variants of the same phonemes.
I needed to present this example to my students but I realised that, while in Jakobson's times, when cock meant just a male chicken, and nothing else (at least, in his linguistic competence), this example sounded perfectly acceptable, today it would unavoidably provoke some giggles among the students.
I tried to change the vowels but different profanities came out again.
Could anyone help me with individuating a presentable, profanity free, minimal triplet in English? It must have the following structure:
/k/ Vowel /k/
/t/ Vowel /t/
/p/ Vowel /p/
My English competence apparently is not enough.