We love to swear.
When you bang your toe, when you’re angry or when Trump won the elections, you swear (and I swear too).
As you already understood, we talked about swear words with Jessie.
Yes, it’s nice to swear. But, do you know what is nicer? To know why we swear.
Well, generally, it’s to express your emotions (particularly anger), to relieve pain, to insult someone or to emphasize something (e.g.: dis is fckg lit xD).
Okay, you are probably not shocked for the moment, all of this is pretty obvious. Besides, what is less obvious is where do swears come from and how they have evolved throughout time.
Well, in the middle Ages, most of swear words were taken from religion, such as the terrible and frightful “Christ blood”. Then, during the Renaissance, people were more intense and use sExUaL words to insult their neighbors. Finally, the swear words from the Victorian era (1837-1901) were very similar to today’s ones, but without racial swears (ahh, the good old days when people were racists but didn’t use racist swearing).
Do you want to improve your insults repertoire? Here are 42 old English insults you could add to it! https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61819/42-old-english-insults
Also, what is really interesting with swear words is that they show the deepest taboos of a society. So, considering that most of our western swears come from racism, sexuality and homophobia, we get a magnificent portrait of our society!
https://i2.wp.com/europeisnotdead.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/European-Swear-Words-VF.jpg?fit=979%2C918&ssl=1
Now, imagine that you accidently break a plate and that you are dying to use your favorite sexual swearing. However, your grandmother, four children under eight years old and a pastor are in the kitchen with you. I think we all agree that it would be a bad idea to yell the F word in front of all these good people. But, do not panic! The English language is wonderfully well done: there’s plenty of replacement words. For example, frick, frack or fudge would be more appropriate. A “Holy sh*t” was about to leave your mouth? You could use “Holy cow” instead. “What the f*ck” becomes “what the heck” and “assh*le” becomes “mean”.
You see? The possibilities are limitless!
Except for racist swears, these are an absolute no.
Freaking racists…
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