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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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*.
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