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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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.
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