Swearing

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I kind of understand biblical objections to blasphemy and it is probably the same in other religions.

I understand why you aren't meant to use slurs although many slurs aren't even considered swear words. Is the N word a swear word? Biggest slur there is and yet, I don't know if it's a swear word...

I don't know why calling faeces 'poo' is better than calling it 'crap' is better than calling it the 'sh' one.

On a moral level: how is that immoral? It's just poo. It doesn't have feelings or deserve respect. If people around you deserve the respect of not talking about it, they deserve the respect of not talking about it whatever you call it.

I feel like (wonder if) this is just an English language thing. English has so many words for the same thing! And English culture is quite class bound.

In the 19th century you couldn't say 'bull'. You had to say 'seed ox' or 'gentleman cow'. Today that would be considered absurd.

My dad is a Christian and he links that in with not liking to hear words like the sh one... I don't get that. It's got nothing to do with taking the Lord's name in vain imo.

Well, you can always do like Samuel L. Jackson:



Or Monty Python:



Move along, nothing to censor here...

Cursewords are linked to a concept called social capital.

Vocabulary and references to certain knowledge indicates to what social class you belong.

Refusal to use cursewords, a commitment to proper grammer and manners, even outdated ones, can build social capital to make you appear to belong to a higher social class. You could be accepted by people with better education, more money, and better social reputation than you, which could make it easier for you gain access to this higher level as well.

Cursewords and references to "lower" social knowledge can also benefit a person depending on the situation. For example, I myself grew up in a dangerous ghetto and because of that I am well equipped to assess street situations and street people. But then I just turn this off most of the time and revert back to not cursing and behaving politely.

I grew up in a household where all of George Carlin's 7 words were used enthusiastically. The morality of doing so were not an issue but I never wanted to come across like and felt that cursing is an unsophisticated and banal way of expressing ones self.

Last edited by Mr Reynholm on 20 Apr 2021, 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

I tend to swear like I'm on Coronation Street most of the time ("Oh flaming nora!") because it's handy to have some words reserved especially for when I'm really cross

It's always seemed strange that there's some words you're not supposed to use for no apparent reason though.

I am a Navy veteran, so I know full well what it means to swear like a sailor.  Hearing a Master Chief Petty Officer swearing at some sleazy dirtbag for a full five minutes without repeating herself was truly a wonder to behold.

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." -- Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a., Mark Twain)

Something I've heard/read several times is that there are neurological aspects to swearwords. They're stored and perceived differently in the brain than all other words. There are several medical conditions where patients blurt out swearwords for no reason (or sometimes are only capable of saying swearwords), so it would be surprising if there wasn't some neurological aspect to it.

That said... it still seems like a puzzling mystery that there actually is such a mechanism in the brain. It probably has something to do with something very fundamental about the origins of spoken language. Maybe swearwords hijack mechanisms that were once reserved for distress calls and/or direct threats of violence in ancestor species. Lots of species develop mechanisms that substitute indirect hostility signals for actual violence in intra-species competition. Maybe swearwords are just the human/hominin version of that.

Actually, that isn't just a quote, it's a medical fact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoalges ... f_swearing

So the people who dislike swearing are really being sadistic... Truly, they are a group of phallus ingesting, rectum canoodling fecal encephalons who fornicate with their female parents!

Having some words be taboo, so that...when you are driven to actually SAY them only at rare occasions...they have an emotional punch, and an emotional release...is a needed thing.

And there is something about curse words that effects your nervous system. At summer camp I HAD to touch a metal tool ...that was in contact with an electric fence ...just to see what would happen. Let out a string of profanity in response to the pain. But it occurred to me then (I was in junior high) that happened to me only a couple years earlier I would not have cussed (because I didnt know or think about four letter words when I was in grade school) have buried my face in a pillow and cried for half of an hour. Cussing accomplished the same emotional release in only seconds!

Then there is Tourettes Syndrome. It makes folks compulsively cuss. So cuss words must reside in some special part of the human brain/nervous system once you learn them.

I was in the Navy too. Back in the 90's,
I spent most of my time underway aboard the USS Portland LSD37. No wonder we don't agree on anything we're both salty old sailors!

'Swear' words tend to fall into the categories of:
Derogatory: b*tch, b*stard, f*g, the n word, the k word, etc.
Sex: d*ck, c**t, f***, w*nker, b*llocks, etc.
Scatology: sh*t, p*ss, arse/ass, etc.
Blasphemy: damn, Hell, taking the lord's name in vain

Obviously there's some overlap but generally speaking:
Derogatory terms are taboo because they sow hatred and reinforce inequality.
Sex and scatological terms are taboo because they are historically seen as 'vulgar' by the educated class and the clergy. ...literally vulgar, ie: pertaining to the lower class. Many of the offensive terms for these things in english were just the original, germanic words for these things before the Norman conquest and we got flooded with romance-language euphemisms. "It's oh so vile when the peasants call it "sh*t", let us call it "feces/fæces" like proper, cultured individuals."
Or, for a better example: scatology, the euphemism I use here for all things sh*t-related, shares the same etymology as the word 'sh*t'. It's no coincidence scatology is two letters away from being sh*tology.

I was taught that swearing was bad when I was growing up, and it never happened in our home. But that changed after my diagnosis. Real life and real problems cause people to need to express themselves in "rebellious" ways.

I just have swear words in my vocabulary, when I was younger I tried to tone that down cause my mom would get all mad about it. But yeah nowdays my mom does not at all seem weirded out if I throw in a few curse words, like it is just how I talk and its not always a negative context. Like I might say 'oh that video was f*****g awesome' or for a more negative context 'what a s**tbag if someone tells me of some a**hole they had the unfortune of interacting with. But it is just words to me, I don't understand why like calling crap s**t is worse than calling it crap it is the same thing.

*edit, weird my post got f*****g bleeped out but s**tbag was not bleeped out just funny you can apparently say s**tbag but not f***ing.

I remember reading, years ago, that they had done research and determined that swearing did trigger the brain to release painkillers. The effect was more pronounced in people that didn't swear as much, and with more forbidden words. Save your big swears for when you stub your toe or something.

Personally, I never swear in front of other people, but I do constantly in my internal monologue.

Thanks, fixed.
The swear filter is a blunt weapon, possibly even prissy - but it does allow for a degree of freedom with bad language that avoids removing a post because of it.

Absolutely - you should hear what gets said in here *taps head* - it's shocking...