Merriam-Webster’s Third Unabridged is kind of strange on these words. It was published in 1961 and didn’t have any of them. But they periodically published supplements with new words. Those were initially published as an addendum at the back, but later (by the time it got up to 6,000 words) as a separate book too. Anyway after it became acceptable for dictionaries to include those taboo words, they put them to the addendum. So in the middle of all these recently coined words are a scattering of very old four-letter words.
No, I quoted it exactly. Why would I bowdlerize it in this thread?
Exactly how where the statutes Colibri mentioned worded? Did the use the forbidden words in the statute? If not how could they specify them?
The statutes in question were the Obscene Publications Act of 1857in the UK and the Comstock Laws of 1873 in the US. They did not define what obscenity was, but made publishing it illegal. What words were included would have been on the basis of “I know it when I see it.” Since everyone would agree that “fuck” and “cunt” were obscene words, in practice it made their publication illegal. Before that their publication would not have been a crime (although publishing obscene works was a misdemeanor in the UK from 1824).
Then I apologize for misunderstanding.
I also remember looking up “dirty words” in the dictionary, but we never looked up swears, since I don’t think they had any in the dictionaries we had at our school. Mostly they were words that kids at that age thought were “dirty” like “sex”, “penis”, “buttocks” etc.
You know how easily amused kids are.
What was the quote?
Is it possible that such laws would have been considered unconstitutionally vague? Okay, “fuck” and “cunt” would have been obvious, but how about lesser expletives? Such as “shit”, or even “mothah”? If the crime is left undefined, how can you be accused of committing it?
In Quebec, such words as “chalice” and “tabernacle” are perfectly acceptable in some contexts and vile obscenities in others (using sacred words profanely).
Important Supreme Court decisions changed the definition of obscenity. Roth v. United States (1957) said that obscenity was material whose “dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest” of the “average person, applying contemporary community standards.” Miller v California(1973) said that obscenity was material that lacks “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”.
At this point, that standard would be so difficult to prove that in effect almost anything goes in the written word. Photos or videos are OK as long as they depict activities involving consenting adults. Whatever standards are applied are mainly imposed by the publisher or broadcaster rather than being legal ones.
I never trusted Noah Webster in the first place— IMO he wasn’t a very nice character— if it was he who selectively censored words when initially compiling his dictionary it doesn’t do much to redeem the picture.
…but enough about the Presidential Easter Message to the nation…
With Johnson we have tapes such as the one of him ordering pants and needing room for his bunghole.
My local paper published the term “Massholes” in a recent opinion piece. I’ve of course heard some of our neighbors to the South referred to as such, but I have never seen it in a newspaper. Google says it was added to the OED in 2015.
The Watergate Tapes made “EXPLETIVE DELETED” part of the language.
As a nitpick, “fuck” and “cunt” aren’t profanities. Nor are they swears nor curses, but they are obscenities and vulgarities. Those are five separate categories, though there can be some overlap.
The Washington Post first published the word ‘shitty’ back in 1982. It published, uncensored, the transcript of the conversation between the National Airport tower and the Air Florida 90 pilots just before that flight took off, then crashed into the 14th Street Bridge seconds later. One of the pilots used that word to describe the weather conditions.