Why do we have words that we “aren’t supposed to say”? What decides what makes a swear word a bad word?
It can’t be meaning, because “poop” is fine and
“shit” is not. Or “sex” or “ruin” is fine, but “fuck” is not.
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vulgarities and obscenities have always existed and changed over the years adapting to new cultural norms.
if enough people decide a word is inappropriate for daily use; or only used by “low class” people than that’s how society at large will see the word.
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Swear words are legitimate words just like any other word. Over time certain words are seen as vulgar due to how they are used. Language evolves, things we say today may or may not been seen as highly offensive to people a few hundred years ago and likewise the other way around.
Also what is offensive depends a lot of the social environment. One country or community may take far more offence to some words over others.
Ultimately swear words exist the same reason any other words exist; to enable better communication. Sometimes there isn’t a way to say something _better_ than with a swear word, for example “for fucks sake” is a very clear way of communicating displeasure at something.
Sure you could word it many different ways but fuck really is the best word to use. Switching it out for some other word just doesn’t communicate the same thing; such as when someone might say “oh for godness sake!” to convey the same displeasure it just sounds (to me at least) less succinct and genuine in their displeasure. Of course this is also a cultural/social/geographic thing.
I’ve heard that swear words were mostly used by lower class, serfs, and peasants. So overtime, upper class people would get very defensive of others who use such words. “You speak like a peasant, you must be a peasant. Be gone with you!”
Each swear is slightly different, but almost all of them usually have a long history that has to do with the evolution of language.
For example, a lot of swears used to be “poor people words,” in the same way words like “ain’t,” is often seen today. Back then they weren’t something to discipline your kid over saying as much as the parents were more likely to just encourage their children to use “proper,” words instead.
Over time, those words evolved into being seen as “dirty,” and shouldn’t be used in polite/official company, and therefore required some restraint when adding those words to your vocabulary. Thing is, children are horrible at showing restraint, so to stop your 6 year old from swearing up thanksgiving dinner thinking it’s funny, it became culturally common to not expose children to these words in the first place, and to heavily discourage their use.
Now, as with a lot of things from language to religion, the ideas we raise children with often become more extreme from generation to generation. Kids being raised that “swear words are bad (but when you’re older they’re fine in the right environment),” are more likely to grow up thinking those words are bad, and just teaching their children “swear words are bad.” Rinse and repeat for a few generations, and you get a generation of adults who think of swearing the same as slapping someone across the face.
There’s also religious swears which are bad due to them being “blasphemous,” against a certain religion’s god or allegedly invoking evil entities in one way or another, but that will of course vary from religion to religion.
In English, at least, a lot of “four letter words” originate from Anglo Saxon, which after the conquest of the Normans who spoke an early French language, nobility was associated with French and peasants were associated with Old English. It’s theorized by some that the “bad” words are bad because of their socioeconomic association, the idea of which which just permeated for centuries until now.
“Vulgar” literally meant “Common”, so vulgar language was language used by “commoners” and not the more refined or well educated. Thus, being vulgar was seen as distasteful to the upper class while it was totally normal to the common folk.
This is reflected in the Albert Camus quote, “The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.”
It really depends on how deep you want to go with all of this. Some words, like the n-word or f*got are taboo because of their historical context. Other swear words are supposed to have certain demonic or spiritual connotations associated with them. I know it’s hard to believe, but there are still plenty of devoutly religious people who believe that you are inviting demons into your life with certain words. Still, other words are abused for their shock value. The shock value words tend to vary by country and circumstance. For example, it’s wise to be very careful whom you call a c*nt in the United States; however, I am told that it’s not that big of a deal in the United Kingdom. “Did you meet the duchess?” “Why yes! A rather pleasant cunt.”
History of English profane words. When the French took over the British aisles, the language mixed with the local germanic language. Over time, a weird language called English started to take shape. As it evolved, Old English preferred many of the germanic words. Scitte (shit) was used for diarrhea. Fuck is also most likely germanic that derived from the germanic word for fist. Ass is Celtic origin. Cunt, whore, bitch, those are germanic.
But many of the words that replaced these words are of the French language. The French rulers wanted people to use their language instead of their native language. In order to offend these French people, some Anglos would use words from their native tongue like shit, bitch, cunt, whore, etc that would really offend them.
As English progressed, we adopted a lot of French words, but still kept these other words in our back pocket to offend people. Diarrhea is the proper way of saying shit. We adopted the word female from the French, so we can just say a female dog instead of bitch (though we still say it for dog shows). Prostitute is more proper than the vulgar cunt. And promiscuous is better than whore. All these proper forms came from the French. And only really poor, uneducated individuals would continue to use these words unironically until i believe the 1600s. And when we use the germanic counterpart to certain words, it signals an intention to offend or signals an uncivilized unintelligent person.
Some words like fuck and dick come up later. Dick is probably a cuss word because it’s referring to the penis in an informal manner. Fuck is germanic, but appeared in the 1400s I believe and possibly came from fist (maybe like fisting?)
TLDR: French took language over. Anglos used some words from native tongue to offend. Time progressed, only uneducated people used these words or people wanting to offend others. Because of this history, alot of these words are to this day considered vulgar. Very basic and simplified but yeah, that’s why they exist
Some other animals have specific cries or sounds for particular threat situations, for example one sound for “look out, there’s a snake” and a distinct sound for “look out, there’s an owl”. It’s not that they’re never supposed to use them, it’s more that they’re not supposed to be used except in emergencies, because they elicit a stress response and they need to be trusted.
It’s kind of the same for us. If somebody hits his thumb with a hammer and swears, we understand. If he swears every sentence in regular conversation, it makes us uncomfortable.
Which sounds are the local swear words is kind of arbitrary and cultural, same as it is with animals. The point is that there’s a set of sounds that are reserved for rare and extreme situations that justify them, and you can’t go around essentially crying wolf all the time when we’re trying to cultivate a civilization that’s sheltered from most natural threats
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