One episode of MST3K featured Crow doing a video testimony for Mike, who was on trial for blowing up planets.
Crow’s entire deposition was peppered with cuss words, all in a cute little BLEEP. It sounded even funnier I think.
“And let me BLEEP tell you something, Nelson. If those BLEEP don’t BLEEPing find you BLEEP innocent, then they can BLEEP just cram it up their BLEEPing stupid BLEEPS!!!”
I see it as something like an emoticon. The * just means you’re sort of mumbling it as opposed to a more in-your-face approach.
I take it no one has explained to history of curse words yet? Ok… here it is.
The anglo-saxons used to use words similiar to shit and fuck as their normal vocabulary for poop and sex. When the normans conquered them, the anglo-saxon language was considered inferior, and thus words such as fuck and shit became literally bad words. But, since so many people spoke anglo-saxon, it got worked into our everyday english language.
That’s why i said the anglo-saxon thing. And if you want some proof of this, ask any good english teacher, i’m sure they’ll know.
I, for one, am far more offended by censorship than by cursing. Curse words are really only offensive because we make them offensive. We really ought to give up censoring them. Allow them everywhere. Broadcast television, high schools, elementary shcools. The words will lose a good portion of their power, and one will have to be more creative with insults in the long run. Let’s go for it.
One stipulation, however: Ridicule those who swear unnecessarily and excessively. I do it all the time.
Me: “Hey, Ken, can you pass me that green paint?”
Ken: points at can of green paint “You mean this shit?”
Me: "Yes, [severe sarcasm] that * shit * [/severe sarcasm].
Hmmm… that doesn’t sound quite right. Just from my own experience, every culture and every language has a set of curse words. I suspect they come about naturally without any help from conquering armies.
Anyway if your theory is correct, why did just those types of words become vulgar? Why not words relating to, say, weather or jumping?
From Cigar Afficianado, the crux of which basically is, sometimes the vulgarity is the right word, and proper context should be the rule.
I’d have to agree (and I resisted the urge to state that more forcefully 
).
Why resist?
Try this on for size;
“Fuckin’ A”
Now there’s an oldie.
Peace,
mangeorge
Well, the history is correct for the english language anyways. And i think they are vulger because they refer to what were thought as vulger things.
I don’t think all words are “vulger” anymore. I mean, bitch is still an insult, but you can say it on tv and no one gives a damn. The same goes for a few other words.
Who here would be offended if someone said five to fifty swears in a row because that said someone is really pissed off?
Just a question.
Offended? Not at all.
Amused? More likely. I’ve been guilty of the deed myself.
I recall a novel, Candy by Terry Southern, in which one of the characters let’s loose with a string of ‘swears’ while engaged in the act with the heroine. It was pretty funny, in context, but I don’t remember exactly what that phrase was.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is gifted with a high tolerance for trash.
Peace,
mangeorge
When Elton John’s song “The Bitch is Back” was first released, a lot of radio stations bleeped the “B-word.” It made the song utterly ridiculous (oh, the BLEEP, oh, the BLEEP, oh, the BLEEP is back…I can BLEEP, I can BLEEP, I can BLEEP). I think that song might have been the sole reason for bitch to finally be used on the radio.
Since typing F*ck has the same meaning as Fuck, just use the correct word. As something has pointed out, its’ really fucked up when, if you say “fucking nigger,” they bleep the first word and don’t bleep the second.
Not quite. While your explanation has some basis in fact, it is not historically correct. The word “shit”, for instance, does have an Anglo-Saxon root, but it was not considered obscene until the early 19th century. That’s a pretty good length of time after the Normans invaded the British Isles.
Many English obscenities do have Germanic roots, but so do many innocent words such as “house” and “cow”. The old Germanic words didn’t become obscene with the Norman conquest, but they did begin to seem unsophisticated and common (or literally vulgar) compared to French-derived words like “mansion” and “beef”.
This process has actually been going on for centuries – words once considered obscene become commonly acceptable, and vice versa. You are correct in saying that obscene words are linked to obscene things, but the things that are considered obscene can change. As I said above, “shit” wasn’t thought of as a bad word until fairly recently. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that until fairly recently people spent a lot more time around excrement (both human and animal) than they do today. When it came to housekeeping it was nearly as common as dirt, so it made little sense for the word for it to be more offensive than “dirt”. On the other hand, blashphemy was once considered far more offensive than it is today. In times when most people took religion very seriously, “damn” was not a word to be thrown around lightly.
Back to the OP, I agree that it’s silly to blot out just one or two letters of a word, leaving it recognizeable. Either replace the whole word ("****!") or leave it alone.