Thread: Great Moments in Swearing

Great Moments in Swearing
By Martha Brockenbrough
It made international news recently when a British student answered an essay question with just two words, one of which is considered extremely naughty and rhymes with "duck." The student scored 2 out of 27 points for his efforts -- a failing grade, but not a zero -- and would have earned more if he'd used punctuation. As the test examiner explained (no doubt in a British accent), "It would be wicked to give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for, like conveying some meaning and some spelling." Though the examiner's colleagues backtracked and said any students who used "duck" or other fowl language would be punished, the testing agency's policy says "if a candidate makes any sort of response to a question then it must be at least given consideration to be awarded a mark." So, if you can communicate an idea -- even using naughty language -- you can earn points for sentiment and spelling. Dam! Swearing finally gets some respect. Mark the year -- 2008.


I'm not saying this as a person who loves to turn the air blue. One of the worst notes I ever got from my daughter's preschool ratted her out for saying "damn it" on the playground. "We don't say that at school," the teacher said. "But we do at home," my daughter replied. It could be worse, I suppose. Other people have been arrested for swearing, including a Scranton woman who unleashed some choice bits of potty talk when her toilet overflowed. A police officer who lived nearby cited her for disorderly conduct. She faced jail time and a $300 fine, but a judge let her off.

Naughty and nice
Swearing gets such a bad rap socially that we haven't paid enough attention to what it reveals about our brains, and this is too bad because it's, um, darned interesting. Did you know, for example, that we use a different part of our brain for cursing and … wait for it … praying? In his book "The Stuff of Thought," the brain scientist Steven Pinker explains that the brain's basal ganglia stores memorized stuff such as swears and prayers. If you suffered damage to that area, you wouldn't be able to pray -- or curse. On the flip side, if you had aphasia, a condition that robs you of articulate speech, you might still be able swear fluently. And you might want to, if you had aphasia. So, one way of looking at swearing would be to say it helps us use more of our brains. Praying might be a more socially acceptable way to do that. But there is a reason the word "oath" means both a declaration invoking God and a dirty word: Both forms have a certain power.

A window to your feelings
You can measure the power of swearing in brain scans. When dirty words are used, the amygdala lights up. This is a primitive part of the brain that links memories with emotion. So, when you swear in anger, you make people pay attention. It's a window to your feelings. And who are we to censor human emotions? As Shakespeare himself said, "When a gentlemen is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths." The word that rhymes with duck is even older than Shakespeare -- the Oxford English Dictionary traces it back to at least 1528. Even before 1500, an English and Latin poem making fun of friars contained the word. However long we've been saying it, it's certainly been procreating. The OED lists 30-some ways to use it. Even so, it's hardly the most colorful curse out there.

Want More Martha?
Read more columns by Martha Brockenbrough.


The "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," compiled in 1785 by Captain Francis Grose, is full of much more interesting expressions, such as "apple dumplin' shop," "Cupid's kettle drums" and "hornified," all of which you can use your imagination to define. Another entry, "huckle my buff," only sounds dirty. It meant "beer, egg and brandy, made hot." Still, apple dumplings haven't had quite the staying power of the classic curses, probably because they evoke more titters than gasps.

Top-notch swearers
No one who's listened to the Nixon tapes can forget the shocking language of the president and all his men. One book -- "Nixon Reconsidered" by Joan Hoff-Wilson -- even analyzed the swearing patterns of the various men involved, concluding two things: swearing begat more swearing, and the Nixon White House had a dirty dozen favorites that hadn't been deleted, which makes you wonder about the worse words that had. And the press went wild when Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a two-word essay of his own on the Senate floor. It was verbal, so there's no way to judge his spelling or punctuation, even if the grammar was flawless. The Federal Communications Commission, likewise, considered it indecent when Cher and Nicole Richie, in separate incidents, quacked on TV. But the same agency said Bono wasn't indecent when he followed the adjectival form of the same word with "brilliant."
Context made all the difference. Bono was using it for emphasis, while Cher and Nicole Richie were expressing anger (Richie, specifically, was mad about how hard it was to clean cow [deleted] out of a Prada purse -- not a [deleted]-ing simple task, apparently).
Artists have found creative ways to dance around profanity. On the cancelled show "Firefly," actors cursed in Chinese. "Da-shiang bao-tza shr duh lah doo-tze" means "the explosive diarrhea of an elephant." Less of a mouthful is "frak," coined on "Battlestar Galactica" and repeated on "Veronica Mars." In the interests of clarity, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar has advanced its own "maledicta key," a way to standardize the typographical symbols used in cartoons so that readers know what's really being said. The Associated Press did not respond to an earnest letter on the topic, so don't expect to have any more insights into the complex emotional life of Beetle Bailey. Really, there's only one thing you can say about that: R@+s!

i love encarta

Great thread. I can't stop cursing. It is ingrained in my brain. I was allowed to watch Richard Pryor and George Carlin when I was 5. I was getting in trouble for cursing when I was in kindergarden.