
Feck: Swearing from the first F to the 21st C - diodorus
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/feck-a-history-of-swearing-from-the-very-first-f-to-the-21st-c-1.2676617
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amyjess
I'd also like to see some cross-linguistic analysis of swearing.

For example, English uses a nice mixture of profanity (religious references,
like "goddammit") and obscenity (sexual words and bodily functions, like
"fuck" and "shit"), but not much literal cursing. But not every language does
that. Quebecois French, for example, uses profanity almost exclusively (where
the worst single word you can say means "tabernacle"), and nobody pays much
attention to obscenity. And then there's Dutch, which relies on literally
cursing people (among the worst things you can say to someone are to tell them
to "catch cholera" or "cancer off", and the worst thing you can call someone
means "cancer patient"), while obscenities are minor insults, and while
profanities are historically more serious, they're not nearly as common as the
curses.

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ereyes01
Would definitely be interesting to see a comparison of English/European
swearing with other languages.

For instance, it's my understanding that in Cantonese, a grave expletive is a
phrase that roughly translates to something like "dead chicken" (source: my
wife). I'm sure there's an interesting linguistic story behind that phrase,
and it's quite different from normal western cursing.

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coredog64
I'm happy to see someone highlight that "swearing" in the biblical sense is
not the same as the use of profanity.

“Swearing” in the Bible refers to oaths, promises before God that your words
are true or that you will do what you say you will.[FTA]

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amyjess
Honestly, when you consider the etymology of "profanity" and "curse word",
they all go back to religious roots. Even the use of deliberately misspelled
and mispronounced curse words is called a "minced oath".

We don't really have a good word for swearing that's not a religious
reference. The closest we have is "obscenity", but that traditionally only
refers to sexual words. For example, "fuck" is obscenity, but "goddammit" is
profanity.

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eru
A comparison to other languages and cultures would be useful.

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distances
In Finnish the origin for "curse word" comes from incantation / casting a
spell. At least nowadays the root word means purely a hostile spell, or a hex.
I'd say in modern use basically equivalent to "a curse" in English, as the
magical aspect isn't really present in the society any more. I can't say if it
has originally also included benevolent spells.

