Definitions and Examples of Swear Words

Definitions and Examples of Swear Words A swear word is a word or expression that is commonly viewed as godless, indecent, revolting, or in any case hostile. Likewise known asâ swearing, awful word, disgusting word, filthy word, and four-letter word. Swear words serve a wide range of capacities in various social settings, notes Janet Holmes. They may communicate irritation, animosity and affront, for example, or they may communicate solidarity and neighborliness (An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 2013). EtymologyFrom Old English, make a vow Models and Observations Spock: Your utilization of language has adjusted since our appearance. It is at present bound with, will we say, progressively vivid analogies, twofold douche bag on you thus forth.Captain Kirk: Oh, you mean the profanity?Spock: Yes.Captain Kirk: Well, that is basically the manner in which they talk here. No one gives any consideration to you except if you swear each other word. Youll discover it in all the writing of the period.(Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 1986)Uses of Swear WordsA last riddle about swearing is the insane scope of conditions wherein we do it. There is purifying swearing, as when we hit our thumb with a sledge or thump over a glass of brew. There are curses, as when we recommend a name or offer exhortation to somebody who has cut us off in rush hour gridlock. There are foul terms for ordinary things and exercises, as when Bess Truman was approached to get the president to state compost rather than fertilizer and she answered, Y ou have no clue to what extent it took me to get him to state excrement. There are interesting expressions that put vulgar words to different utilizations, for example, the farm appellation for untruthfulness, the military abbreviation disaster, and the gynecological-flagellative term for uxorial predominance. And afterward there are the descriptor like exclamations that salt the discourse and split the expressions of officers, youngsters, Australians, and others influencing a blustery discourse style.(Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature. Viking, 2007) Social SwearingWhy do we swear? The response to this inquiry relies upon the methodology you take. As a linguistnot an analyst, nervous system specialist, discourse pathologist or some other - istI consider promises to be definitively designed verbal conduct that promptly fits a useful investigation. Sober-mindedly, swearing can be comprehended as far as the implications it is taken to have and what it accomplishes in a specific situation. . . .Ordinarily, a social swear word starts as one of the terrible words however gets conventionalised in an unmistakably social structure. Utilizing swear words as free intensifiers adds to the agreeable, uncertain nature of casual talk among in-bunch individuals. . . . In aggregate, this is jokey, cruisy, loosening up talk in which members oil the wheels of their association as much by how they talk as what they talk about.(Ruth Wajnryb, Language Most Foul. Allen Unwin, 2005)Secular Swearing[I]t would give the idea that in Western culture the sig nificant moves in the focal point of swearing have been from strict issues (all the more particularly the breaking of the instruction against maligning the Lords name) to sexual and substantial capacities, and from slanderous abuse, for example, coolie and kike. Both of these patterns mirror the expanding secularization of Western society.(Geoffrey Hughes, Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English. Blackwell, 1991) George Carlin on Bad WordsThere are 400,000 words in the English language and there are seven of them you cannot state on TV. What a proportion that is! 300 ninety 3,000 900 and ninety three . . . to seven! They should truly be awful. Theyd must be ludicrous to be isolated from a gathering that enormous. Every one of you here . . . You seven, you terrible words.Thats what they let us know, you recollect? That is a terrible word. What? There are no awful words. Terrible considerations, awful aims, however no awful words.(George Carlin with Tony Hendra, Last Words. Simon Schuster, 2009)David Camerons Jokey, Blokey InterviewDavid Camerons jokey, blokey meet . . . on Absolute Radio at the beginning of today is a genuine case of what can happen when legislators endeavor to be down with the kidsor for this situation, with the thirtysomethings. . . .Inquired as to why he didnt utilize the long range informal communication site Twitter, the Tory head stated: The issue with Twitter, the insta ntness of ittoo numerous jokes may make a twat. . . .[T]he Tory pioneers assistants were in protective mode a short time later, bringing up that twat was not a swear word under radio guidelines.(Haroon Siddique, Sweary Cameron Illustrates Dangers of Informal Interview. The Guardian, July 29, 2009) S***r W***s[N]ever use bullets, or such nonsensicalness as b-, which are only a cop out, as Charlotte Brontã « perceived: The act of indicating by single letters those exclamations with which profane and fierce individuals are wont to decorate their talk, strikes me as a procedure which, anyway very much implied, is frail and purposeless. I can't determine what great it doeswhat feeling it spareswhat ghastliness it conceals.(David Marsh and Amelia Hodsdon, Guardian Style, third ed. Gatekeeper Books, 2010)Supreme Court Rulings on Swear WordsThe Supreme Court’s last significant case concerning communicate foulness, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation in 1978, maintained the commission’s assurance that George Carlin’s great seven messy words monolog, with its intentional, tedious and inventive utilization of vulgarities, was revolting. Be that as it may, the court left open the topic of whether the utilization of a periodic swearword could be punished.The case chosen Tue sday, Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, No. 07-582, emerged from two appearances by big names on the Billboard Music Awards.Justice Scalia read the entries at issue from the seat, however he subbed intriguing shorthand for the filthy words.The first included Cher, who considered her profession in tolerating an honor in 2002: I’ve additionally had pundits throughout the previous 40 years saying I was on out each year. Right. So F-em. (As he would see it, Justice Scalia clarified that Cher figuratively proposed a sexual go about as a methods for communicating antagonistic vibe toward her critics.)The second section arrived in a trade between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in 2003 in which Ms. Richie talked about in obscene terms the troubles in wiping cow excrement off a Prada purse.Reversing its approach on such short lived swearwords, the commission said in 2006 that the two communicates were disgusting. It didn't make a difference, the commission stated, that a portion of the hostile words didn't allude legitimately to sexual or excretory capacities. Nor did it make a difference that the reviling was secluded and obviously extemporaneous. . . .In switching that choice, Justice Scalia said the adjustment in approach was levelheaded and along these lines admissible. It was unquestionably sensible, he composed, to establish that it look bad to recognize strict and nonliteral employments of hostile words, requiring monotonous use to render just the last indecent.Justice John Paul Stevens, contradicting, composed that few out of every odd utilization of a swear word indicated something very similar. As any golf player who has watched his accomplice shank a short methodology knows, Justice Stevens composed, it is ludicrous to acknowledge the recommendation that the resultant four-letter word expressed on the fairway portrays sex or dung and is subsequently indecent.It is amusing, most definitely, Justice Stevens went on, that whil e the F.C.C. watches the wireless transmissions for words that have a questionable relationship with sex or dung, plugs communicate during prime-time hours much of the time ask watchers whether they are doing combating erectile brokenness or are experiencing difficulty heading off to the bathroom.(Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Upholds F.C.C.’s Shift to a Harder Line on Indecency broadcasting live. The New York Times, April 28, 2009) The Lighter Side of Swear WordsTell me, child, the on edge mother stated, what did your dad state when you let him know youd destroyed his new Corvette?Shall I forget about the swear words? the child asked.Of course.He didnt state anything.(Steve Allen, Steve Allens Private Joke File. Three Rivers Press, 2000) Interchange Spellings: swearword, swear-word