Verified by 
Key points
- Over the course of the history of English, what offends us has changed drastically.
- Swearing, cursing and obscenity are distinct forms of bad language.
- Profanity usually centers on cultural taboos which differ over time and place.
- Recognition of the social and expressive value of colloquial and slang speech has risen sharply over the course of the 20th century.
As a linguist, the study of words is par for the course. While words like zoombombing and finna may attract a lot of notice in terms of what’s timely or trending, some words, like the f-word or insults like whore and bastard, seem to have stood the test of time. Why do we find that profanity has long been part and parcel of what we do with language?
A taboo topic
Profanity is unnerving and noticeable because it often deals with cultural taboos. Swearing and cursing rise up around topics that make us uncomfortable or that society deems unacceptable. In all cultures, certain subjects — often those associated with religion, social stigmas like illegitimacy, body functions and sexual activity — are off-limits because they are considered sacred, disgusting or derogatory, though what constitutes a societal taboo varies by time and by place. By using language which evokes or takes on these topics, it draws attention to the speaker, which is generally the point.
Though all are viewed as offensive, swearing, cursing and obscenity are actually distinct forms of ‘bad’ language. For instance, swearing historically only referred to when people, centuries ago, used God’s name in the taking of a formal oath. According to Geoffrey Hughes’ in his Encyclopedia of Swearing, such swearing was part of regular legal and fiscal exchanges until, during the Middle Ages, it became associated with the irreverent use of God’s name outside of sanctioned oath-swearing.
Cursing, on the other hand, was more about the intentional wishing of evil or harm toward someone. Obscenity was basically using explicit, immoral and titillating words, but generally not involving either God or the devil.
During the Middle Ages, immorality and doubt cast on one’s paternal lineage were quite a bit more offensive than anything related to excrement. So, according to Melissa Mohr’s book Holy Sh*t detailing the history of swearing, the time of being offended by things like profane poop terminology did not come around until the 18th and 19th centuries.
A Good Golly Gee
Today, the line between swearing, cursing and obscenity is somewhat blurred, with most people seeing all three falling together under the larger rubric of swear words or profanity. And while a lot of our modern bad words revolve around sex or unmentionable body parts, this is a fairly modern list of things we get nasty about. In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, sacred or religious blasphemy was considered the height of linguistic sinfulness, and those hell-bent on using it tended to find themselves facing not just condemnation, but often also legislation.
As time went on, religious-based profanity lost a bit of its zing as a deadly sin, leading to a shift in the types of preferred profane topics. In a 2019 study, linguists Sali Tagliamonte and Bridget Jankowski tracked a substantial decrease in the use of euphemisms for God’s name (such as gosh and jeez) occurring in a collection of Canadian speech since the 19th century. Instead, non-euphemistic expressive forms like Oh my God!, Thank God, or just God have risen over the past 200 years.
Power and the profane
Such findings suggest that the use of euphemistic words like Golly which was driven by strong social and religious disapproval of ‘vain’ swearing is no longer necessary. More permissive attitudes and recognition of the social and expressive value of colloquial and slang speech has risen sharply over the course of the 20th century as societal mores have become more relaxed. Expressions with God as in My God now serve to communicate emotional intensity rather than profanity.
In fact, the rapid rise in the use of non-euphemistic terms for swearing suggests that these expressions have become semantically bleached, or lost the association they originally carried, to be more just ways to get across secular surprise or emotion. This type of meaning loss is not unusual, even for profanity. For example, Hughes cites modern day drat as being a shortened form of God rot as in "'God rot your bones!,' a curse that certainly presents our modern mild drat in a much more ominous light.
In short, religious blasphemy is out, at least in terms of being noticeably offensive, and sh*t and sex are in. Today, swearing is not only less likely to land you in trouble with the church and the law, but might even serve as a cathartic outlet.
According to Mohr in her book Holy Sh*t, it seems there was an increase in profanity after WWI and WWII because swearing was nothing compared to the horrors soldiers saw during the war. Saying powerfully bad words helped them deal with intense experiences. They, in turn, brought this linguistic prowess home to their families who also embraced this new freedom of expression.
So, though sh*t and f*ck may be what gets tossed around more today, what drives the use of such language is much the same as it has always been — the power of transgressing social conventions to say that which should not be said. And though it may seem that offensive language is more prevalent than ever, those who strolled the streets named gropecuntlane and pissynglane in 13th and 14th century London might very well disagree.
References
Hughes, Geoffrey. 2006. An Encyclopedia of Swearing : The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World. Taylor & Francis Group.
Mohr, Melissa. 2013. Holy shit: A brief history of swearing. Oxford University Press.
Tagliamonte, Sali and Bridget L. Jankowski. 2019. Golly, Gosh, and Oh My God! What North American Dialects can Tell Us about Swear Words. American Speech 94 (2): 195–222.
