When I say ‘I swear I will do it by today’ I mean ‘I promise I will do it by today’ I dont mean anything vulgar. Yet, when I see people using the term swear, they mean those vulgar words. When and why did this shift happen?
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https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/swear#Etymology_1
> The sense “to use bad language” developed in Middle English and is based on the Christian prohibition against swearing in general (cf. Matthew 5:33-37) and invoking God’s name in particular (i.e. frequent swearing was considered similar to the use of obscene words).
So “swearing” was not allowed since it was considered sacrilegious, and so it became a euphemism for using any kind of bad language.
Bad language has several subsets – broadly: profanity, vulgarity, and cursing.
* Profanity is the irreverent treatment of sacred things. (“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain”)
* Vulgarity is the public statement of things that are private and/or unclean. See: 7 words you can’t say on TV
* Cursing is attempts to call down supernatural harm on something. “Damn it”, “Go to hell”, “I hope you die” etc.
Anyway, cursing is closely related to *oaths*, where you call on the supernatural to witness an assertion you wish to make (“As God is my witness”, “May God strike me down if I’m lying” etc). And the verb for making an oath is *swear*.
In the olden times, people believed that if you swear an oath in the name of god, god would- by the power of you invoking his name – get a notification and come to whitness the oath. You may have heard to ‘not say gods name in vain’. So from that point of view, it’s totally cool if you swear an honest oath, but exclaiming ‘God damn!’ (the popular expression in medieval times was something along “By God!” or “By God’s bones!”) etc. makes the church mad.
When that exactly happened is hard to tell, it’s assumed somewhere in the medieval times. Basically swearing in that sense meant taking a false oath (“By god if you don’t stop, my head will explode!”) and or using a sacred name in vain. So not the usual vulgar stuff, but the term ‘swearing’ then got used also to describe profanity in general.
Because many of the early “swear” words were religious. Today, in English “curse words” can include references to religion, sex, or excrement. In Canadian French (Quebecois), the curse words are from the scared domain, focusing on objects of the Mass: the tabernacle, the host (wafer), the oil, the chalice, etc.
Many religious “oaths” were watered down and abbreviated (“minced”). Here’s a few that i remember:
Bloody! “by our lady” still considered a swear word in the UK
Zounds! “God’s wounds” the wounds of the crucifixion
Gadzooks! “God’s hooks” the nails of the crucifixion
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