Onward and f-word
Shot by an anarchist while standing at a Brussels railway station, the Prince of Wales utters the immortal words, “Fuck it, I’ve taken a bullet.”
– Moments in the history of the F-word
One day, years ago, while driving down Nice’s Promenade des Anglais in the pouring rain, with my 10-month old daughter in the back, a car swerved over to my lane and cut me off, making me gasp, fishtail slam on the breaks and sound the horn.
Naturally, being a Niçois, the fellow gave me the finger and, true to his origins, figured that wasn’t quite enough so stopped suddenly in the middle of the slippery thoroughfare – making me swerve 180°, and all people behind me come to a squealing halt – got out, walked back, stuck his head in the window and began to suggest that I: “%%##@**!”
As I sat there wondering how to respond, a baby voice from the back seat took care of it, saying “hé, caca de salaud d’enfoiré!” (roughly translated: hey, you poopoo asshole prick).
Ahem.
I’m going to hasten to add that my foul-mouthed little darling didn’t get those words from me (I was so awfully careful in those days), but still she got them, and knew when the timing was right.
Now, 13 years later, her vocabulary is so rich that I sometimes require explanation before I can gawp at what comes out of that lollipop mouth she kisses me with.
So why do we swear?
As children we quickly learned words’ ability to shock and egged on by the admonishment that certain words are “bad.” That alone is enough to make us want to use them. They help us score points in the schoolyard. They make us feel cool, certain we’re getting away with something, and laugh like crazy – even though/because we have no idea what they mean.
For people of my generation – and background, no doubt – shit and fuck were heavy-duty words growing up, never to be used around the parents and only rarely out of earshot. (Well, actually, we couldn’t even say hell or shut up in my house.) Which could explain, in part, why I now use them far too much. Or, it could be that they’re just so darned effective.
There are two kinds of cursing: the spontaneous kind – the unfettered near involuntary response to pain or surprise, and deliberate swearing – meant to wound or make others laugh (here, target audience is of the essence).
Research has apparently shown that each of these types of swearing is rooted in a different hemisphere of the brain: left = reasoning = deliberate; right = emotional = spontaneous cussing. So people whose left hemisphere has been damaged can swear automatically, but cannot utter the same words on demand.
Coprolalia (copro from the Greek kopros: dung + lali: babbling) – occasionally one of the manifestations of Tourette syndrome, wherewith the afflicted are unable to resist the urge to utter “socially inappropriate” words and phrases – apparently derives from an abnormal metabolism of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin.
After all these years in France, I notice that I now say aïe! instead of ow! when I burn or cut myself, along with a few other colourful, not so bons, mots. It seems to work better for some reason. I expect some clever person has done research on why certain vowel and consonant combinations are more effective at soothing seething than others.
Hard consonants appear to be particularly rewarding. I’m guessing it has something to do with a substitute for spitting.
Some consider it a (Christian) virtue not to swear which, I’ll admit, is far more laudable than those lazy-brained types whose vocabulary’s sole qualifier is fucking – with the occasional addition of so for emphasis.
But why do we swear or, perhaps more interesting, aside from the obvious offence of racial slurs, why have we ruled certain words to be out of bounds in polite conversation where ladies and children are present?
Our slang changes at breakneck speed but, curiously enough, most of our great guns swear words have been around for centuries. And even though we no longer get the death penalty for uttering them, in some countries you can still get fined.
I don’t suppose we now swear anymore than we used to. I like that you can say anything on TV here in France – it just seems more mature – and I expect that the lessening restrictions in historically more puritanical markets is driven more by commercial imperatives than anything.
Even though my ability to swear is relatively unfettered, there are some words I just can’t say, and I rarely use foul language in writing – something to do with seeming permanence perhaps, plus the sense that, on paper, you irremediably imperious bunyip will be more effective than you fucking knob.
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Comment
- So is that “buny-ip” or “bun-yip”?
— Simon Apr 14, 5:34am # - “But why do we swear or, perhaps more interesting, aside from the obvious offence of racial slurs, why have we ruled certain words to be out of bounds in polite conversation where ladies and children are present?”
We need to keep special words in reserve for times that call for special emphasis. It would be no good if, in times of need, you could call someone nothing more shocking than “ignorant man” and the like. We (well, maybe not you, but I) sometimes need to call that ignorant man something that will make the hair rise on the back of his neck.
Of course, if you go too far over the top (“you goddamned stupid dog-felching cunt,” for example), it just becomes too silly to offend, but it has to be strong enough—there’s no sense in calling some vile person a poopy-head if he’s only going to laugh and call you a dick.
So we learn to gauge when “asshole” is too much, not enough, or just right. And we each keep a brown bag of such spiny names in an easy-to-reach place. When we need to offend, we pull one out and sling it without much thought.
If the spines wear down on a name (“bastard,” for example, in a world full of unmarried parents), we have to replace it with something spinier (oh, say, “goddamned stupid dog-felching cunt”), because we’ll always need a bag of sufficiently spiny words to throw at the deserving. This, I think, is why we don’t want our favorite offensive words bandied about by ladies and children. If all the girls on the playground are chanting “Cunt, cunt, you fucking cunt” as part of a skipping song, adults will soon have to think of something spinier.
— eeksypeeksy Apr 14, 5:38am # - As a high school teacher I’m immersed in foul language, but personally like to save it for special occasions, including one delicious one that still evokes a smile when I think of it.
I had a student named Nicol who was so constantly annoying that my private name for him was the Mosquito, and had I made it public, the entire student body would have adopted it immediately, because he was universally irritating, and so cocky and generally pleased with himself that he was oblivious to his own reputation.
One day I got to school hours early and began working on the computer, trying as usual to catch up. I was so engrossed that when I finally looked at the time a few hours later, it was almost half an hour after the start of school.
Where were my students? The door was unlocked…They were standing in a clump outside, each assuming someone else had tried the door!
All but the Mosquito, who had become restless and taken off, assuming I wasn’t there. They sheepishly came in and got to work, but he never showed up.
And apparently no one clued him in, because the next day, as my class was working intently, and completely silently, he waltzed in about ten minutes late, saw me look up from across the room and notice his tardiness, and said loudly, “Yeah, but where were YOU yesterday? YOU were tardy, Miss Bean!”
I paused for effect, and the class, in on the secret, held its collective breath until I quietly and very deliberately said,
Nicol?.....fuck….you.
The entire class burst out in shocked laughter.
Later in the day, after someone had explained things to him, he came in and said,
“Miss Bean, that was FUNNY!”
and I never got called on it, much to my relief.
— wizmo Apr 14, 8:23am # - Go, Miss Bean! That was funny.
Plus, gotta say I’m right looking forward to a top google ranking for “stupid dog-felching cunt.”
Won’t they be surprised.
— gail Apr 14, 10:10am # - Oh, and, I believe it’s pronounced bun-yip. Any reference to bunnies would only soften the blow.
— gail Apr 14, 10:13am # - My mother always says “Watch it, person!” when calling attention to the way some other car is menacing her own. The invective that circumstance and a little emphasis can load into the word “person” is no less brutal for its being polite.
Her mother always said, loudly, “Oh, spit!” Works well enough.
My high school girlfriend’s mother was Hungarian, and she’d picked up conversational English by (among other things) watching the Flintstones and Perry Mason, which has about as much to do with the following anecdote as what she said the time the boys mischeivously stuck a severed penis in her lab coat. Anyway. She never cursed. But: one day, while we were hanging out in their living room, she comes in with a couple bags of groceries, and being gawpy teenagers, we didn’t leap up to help her, and in wrestling them up to the countertop one squirmed loose and in its bid for freedom fell sideways onto the floor. I don’t recall the components of the resulting mess, but they were epic enough: dried peas rolling away hither and yon, spaghetti tumbling into a bright yellow game of pick-up stix, a bottle of olive oil shattered. And she said, loud and clear, “Damn!”
And then the most amazing expression swept over her face: delight, relief, empowerment all mixed together. Enlightenment. “Oh!” she said. “Oh! Now I see why you say that! It feels so good! Damn!” she said. “Damn! Damn!”
— Kip Manley Apr 14, 10:45am # - My wife is a high-school teacher, and we swear freely enough in appropriate (and occasionally inappropriate) situations. But we’ve been to a number of parties with elementary school teachers, some of whom, after years at the job, can’t easily shut off the filter. So they’ll drop a glass of wine and say “Fiddlesticks!”
You can sense their inner pain at being unable to swear spontaneously.
— Derek Apr 14, 1:34pm # - “Plus, gotta say I’m right looking forward to a top google ranking for…”
Oh, fiddlesticks!
I wonder if we could google bomb G**rge B*sh (we all have words we can’t bring ourselves to repeat) with it?
— eeksypeeksy Apr 14, 3:00pm # - A long term rant of mine. I think you have missed a further distinction. I swear relatively frequently as did most of my friends (French) in France. I do not swear for to upset anyone and believe that it is an acceptable use of words for emaphasis. Where I do believe it is offensive is when the words are used with venom or hatred. That is the distinction.
Now I am in the UK I still find myself occassionally swearing in French. Does the fact that nobody understands it make it OK? THEY ARE WORDS! It is the feeling and the intent behind them that matters.
As an aside I remember about 15 years ago seeing a discussion on swearing which was followed by a letter. As far as I can remember it went something like:-
Dear Sir
I have followed with considerable interest, your discussion the subject of profanity. I am particularly intrigued by the carte balanche assertion by some of your contributors that the use of swear words is indicative of a lack of knowledge of the English languge and its application. For some 25 years I have been jointly responsible for compiling and editing the Oxford English Dictionary but I swear like a trooper so that fucks that theory doesn’t it?
Yours …
— Cancergiggles Apr 14, 6:04pm # - I have just read the appalling entry above and must apologise for its dreadful spelling and grammar. Your comments box has print which is so miniscule that my failing eyesight cannot pick up errors until the post is completed. I think there are more errors in my small comment than in the 30,000 words on my own blog. At least I hope so.
— Cass Apr 14, 6:09pm # - my story isn’t close to as funny as everyone else’s … sigh i’m sorry.
see, for all appearance i’m a good kid. which is why during high school i loved swearing. the shocked expressions on other people’s faces was always worth it. ‘course afterwards i’d feel slightly ashamed …
one day, ranting to my friends about the unfair state of a world that expected saintliness of me, i exclaimed, “people don’t think i swear and shit, but i do.”
i stopped, struck by the expressions on my friends’ faces.
“oh. yeah. i do.”
though, “shit” is tame compared to some of the stuff in here.
haha, and i particularly loved the miss bean story. i think i’ll forward that to my former english teacher – if you don’t mind that is, miss bean. =]
— phathima Apr 14, 7:21pm # - Intent to protect the young ears of child passengers in her car, a friend of my wife would shout ‘Vacuum!’ at drivers of other cars when the pissed her off. Since the other drivers couldn’t hear her anyway, it didn’t matter what she shouted so long as they would lip-read it as ‘Fuck you!’
— John Hudson Apr 14, 7:55pm # - In elementary school we took advantage of our official bilingualism to employ two divergent Francophonic workarounds for punishable language (these will be recognizable to most Canadians): one was to say “Phoque! That means ‘seal’ in French!” and the other was to walk around shouting out “Ah, Tabernacle!” and “Zut alors!” and whatever else we’d picked up in French class. After a while we’d just scream out random French words, the entire language having taken on a sort of obscene tinge.
— palinode Apr 14, 10:19pm # - At 17, living at home, single mom, no Dad, chafing and breaking loose and dealing and not dealing with all the confining safety and strange scary freedoms of those years and my mom, recently separated, going through menopause, freaked by everything and having to support a household on the non-support from my father and her salary as an X-Ray tech, would make odd rulings when things were getting beyond her.
Some of the things were sensible but abrupt, and some were just loony and inappropriate, and then there’d be these almost sexual contests for position of strength, which I’d generally lose or felt like I had even when I didn’t, even when I went to the Fillmore and stayed away for two days, being a loyal young enabler mostly otherwise.
But once, in a fit of pure defiant teenage power, I said in a perfect spot in the angry argument/dialog, in perfect tones of perfect emphasis,
“Fuck. You. Mom.”
The shock was incredibly rewarding, the first time. And the second time she was fearing it, so when it came there was that.
A third or fourth time, and then the next time I said it, and she said,
“No. Fuck you. Mike.”
And that was it for the profanity bomb.
—
I really like that cussing in a foreign language thing.
Yelling “eat shit!” at people who have no idea what you’re saying can’t be an insult unless that’s the intent can it?
So if you can say it joyfully, in a spirit of universal camaraderie, as I’m sure many vacationing young people have had opportunity to do over the years, well there you go.
—
Why do we do that swearing thing?
Maybe because it links us to the feral edge of infancy. When we learned that excrement was bad.
And got punished for things. So that there was a dark place.
And later we learned there were words like that too.
So bad words, bad feelings.
And when it’s in response to shock and negative surprise maybe it’s a way of saying “No!” the way a toddler does.
Reversing the energy.
—
Interesting that the verbal taking of a serious oath is a swearing as well. Do you swear to tell the truth?
Taking an oath, swearing an oath.
The President takes the oath of office.
Word voo-doo.
Most interesting in a culture as rife with end-time faith as US is, the words “damn” and “hell”, meaning to be condemnded for all eternity to a place of constant suffering, saunter right by the censors, while the word “fuck”, that describes the act by which all precious children are brought into the world, is itself denied entry.
More word voo-doo.
—
I think if you’re gonna solicit the google-bots you should tart up that bunyip thing.
— msg Apr 15, 2:31am # - Any reference to bunnies would only soften the blow
Even if the bunnies are felching the dog?
I’m sorry, I think I have to go for a lie down, now.
— Simon Apr 15, 5:32am # - I love the bit about screaming out random French words. I guess “Pardon my French” would be an appropriate follow-up.
— leslee Apr 15, 12:04pm # - Bunyip:
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001270.php
— language hat Apr 16, 11:32am # - What a F@#$ all post ;-)
Liked it. Really! I think there’s a song on the F word too. I don’t remember the entire lyrics, or the singer. But the last line seems brilliant to me.
The word “fuck” can be an entire sentence.
as in “Fuck the fucking fuckers”.
That, I think is the attitude of all us Gen X
— Ravages Apr 20, 8:26am # - It’s true that there is more grace and intelligence in calling someone an ‘onion-eyed, empty-headed, measled bit of fecal matter’, but honestly, for me, nothing beats the brute pleasure of pronouncing someone a ‘fuckhead.’
— bluepoppy Apr 20, 10:18am # - It’s the tone of voice that matters, not the words you use. You can usually tell when someone is swearing in a foreign language even if you can’t understand what they’re saying. If you can understand the words it adds to the impact.
My favorite swearword is Cach! (Welsh for shit).
— omniglot Apr 20, 1:29pm # - My grandma is from England and always says ‘ruddy’ instead of ‘bloody’ or ‘fucking’
eg ‘’Oh that ruddy cat peed in my garden again!’’
It sounds cute with the accent…really it does
— Mel Apr 27, 2:00pm # - Not story, but an rather arrousing discription.
Us balkan folk have probably got the most, uh… swearish vocabulary in the whole of Europe.
Things like ‘jebem ti mater’(I fuck your mother) or ‘pizda ti materna’(your mothers cunt) are used on daily basis. Even by the female population (though there is a ‘father’ eqvivalent).
And yes, our parents are very proud of us…
— e[lp]e Apr 29, 12:30am # - Hey. I think that swearing is the shit. Shit hell damn piss and moan. I’m in school right now, I’m a senior and let me tell you, it sucks goat asshole. I think I’ll enjoy a good, loud, FUCK!
— Chuk Apr 29, 12:07pm # - I do say old chap:
What a beautifully refined morsel of linguistics derrived from the Germans.
‘tis an awfully grand gesture to be used when courting a fine damsel in a social gathering: “I say my lady, you will be fucking my twinky by the end of tonight! What?!”
— MorFeeN May 12, 10:24pm #
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