‘Fuck’ is a mixed up word. We use it both as a word for having sex and in variations of ‘fuck you’ towards people we don’t like. This seems weird because we are wishing something pleasurable (usually) on someone we don’t like. I’ve read that it makes sense when you consider the origins of the word. ‘Fuck’ was an old Anglo-Saxon verb meaning ‘to strike’. Probably a case of onomotopeia (sp?), ‘fuck’ does kinda sound like the sound when you hit something. This original meaning makes it obvious why it was used in the ‘fuck you’ sense - you’re not wishing the person sex, you are wishing that they get hit. Later it got a separate meaning, ‘to have sex’. This is understandable, as today ‘I’d like to hit that’ is slang for ‘I’d like to have sex with her’.
As to various swear words originally being acceptable, the only one I am sure that was OK was ‘cunt’, which had no negative connotations, several hundred years ago English mothers probably told their daughters to wipe their cunts after they piss.
I read the entire thread, just to be sure. No one else has commented on the variations of what, precisely, is a swear word in different countries/languages.
Many of the words that are considered to be the most offensive in the U.S. have little effect in England, where saying “bloody (whatever)” is considered a far worse form of profanity by some. Why? Because they connect it back to the medieval practice of religious oaths, as “God’s blood,” “God’s bones,” etc. So you will hear Brits say “bloody hell,” (and that’s a particularly offensive one, connecting Jesus with hell) as is “bloody Keeriist (drawn out pronunciation of Christ).” Some also tend to combine the big Murkin four letter ones with “bloody” or “Christ”.
I’d like to point out that quite different words (in terms of the meanings thereof) are used as profanity in other languages. Maybe some Dopers with other birth languages would enlighten us?
Swear words generally fall under three categories:
Religious
Scatalogical
Insults to Family members
The last hasn’t been mentioned because it doesn’t occur very often in English, then only in context of other swear words.
Hate words (the “N” word) seem to have come along very recently.
You can’t say that someone “invented” swear words. They are learned behaviors.
Children learn swearing two ways:
First by example, where the child sees a parent swearing to express anger or pain or high emotion, the child learns that that is the way to handle those emotions.
Secondly, by reinforcement. Children need attention(and like to provoke reactions), and at a certain age, they will repeat every word they hear over and over. When they repeat swear words adults around them will often give a lot of attention immediately, where any other word will be ignored. The reinforcement is refined as the child differentiates between the negative attention of swearing vs. more positive attention received in other ways. Negative attention can be desirable, especially if the child is angry or hurt, which is again reinforced by adult examples. Refinement also comes from the degree of reaction that the child gets from different words.
Because swear words are reinforced by the reactions that they cause, the words change as our culture changes. The “N” word is a good example - it doesn’t feel like a swear word to me, but it was not a forbidden word when I was a young child (mid-60’s) and would not have gotten much reaction. It’s possible that people who are young children now will use it in the accusatory fashion (a la “You bastard”) and maybe the next generation will use it when they hit their thumb with a hammer.
Interestingly enough, originally vulgar language was not necesarily swearing or bad language. It also included slang that was used by the lower orders. In the upper clases, use of vulgar language marked you as “Not our kind”.
I quote from my etymological dictionary, copyright 1938. Both listings “fk" and "ct” begin with the sentence “One of the two SE [standard English] words that cannot be printed anywhere in the English speaking world”. So they must have been standard English at one time.
One thing that I realize is that right now we entirely lack any really strong expletive. Whereas once upon a time, magazines like the New Yorker didn’t allow even relatively mild expletives, nowadays “fuck” seems to appear several times in every issue. I guess people much younger than me cannot appreciate how strong that word was. You used it only in extremis and it conveyed the idea that you were in extremis. There is no such word that I am aware of today.
In French (at least in Quebec) the swear words are mainly–or exclusively–religious. Two of the strongest are (in anglicized versions) “chalice” and “tabernacle”. I have no idea how they compare in strength to “fuck”. Will this usage survive the increasing loss of religion among French Canadians? Stay tuned.
It may have been mentioned, but I’ll go ahead and throw in my explaination.
Some have obvious religious connection, so you can’t say godd*** or other things like that.
However, as I’ve heard it, words that were just made up like s*** or f*** were once used by everyone. Then the upper echelons of society started using more proper names for these, but the poorer population still used “bad” words. So these words like s*** and f*** became “dirty” words that all the poor people used. It eventually became this thing that no reasonable person should use that type of language most commonly used by the plebes of society.
There’s motherfucker, which is indeed sort of a combination of the last two categories. And there is a common set of jokes (mainly in the black community) “Your mother’s so ugly, ..”.
It also means that swear words in a foreign language are not meaningful. Bloody is a major swear word in Britain, but nothing in America (and that’s even in the same language, just a different culture). As a child, we had French visitors staying at our farm, and I couldn’t figure out why they were saying “mud!” when it was dry & dusty out – it was many years before I realized they were saying “merde” (‘shit’).
There is a story about early days of the Minnesota Twins, when they had a player from Central America, with very limited (almost none) English proficiency. Others on the team had a good time (mis-)teaching him some English words. So when he took his position on the field at the start of the game, he greeted the nearby umpire with “good afternoon, motherfucker”. (That umpire would have been upset, if he hadn’t noticed the other players laughing their heads off.)
P.S. Are there any swear words used in the Bible? (As expletives, I mean, not actual swearing or cursing.)