swear!

Swearing and profanity have been around since humans realised what could be done with a low-slung larynx and a mobile epiglottis. By its nature swearing makes us uncomfortable, but it has some positive psychological and physical effects at the same time, acting like a verbal horoscope revealing a lot about your personality.

- TERRY ROBSON

Swearing” is the use of taboo language. The paradox is that while swearing is the use of words that are unacceptable, it is also ubiquitous. It is also not new; humans have probably been swearing as long as there has been language to swear with. These days surveys tell us that approximately 58 per cent of people swear sometimes” or often” and only less than 10 per cent swear never” or rarely”. Usually, it is the word itself that is the taboo and not the thing it is referring to. It is fine, for instance, to talk about sexual intercourse but the word f---” is considered severe swearing by 71 per cent of people. Of course, like all of language, swearing has evolved over the centuries and the path of that evolution is damn interesting.

Bloody common language

Swearing is a very ancient human practice. There is evidence that the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all cursed, with a popular Roman curse being By Hercules!” Dr Amanda Laugesen is the author of Rooted: An Australian History of Bad Language, and in the book she notes, What is considered most potent changes across time, although taboo has often focused on the religious hell), the sexual f---], and the excretory sh--]. More recently racial, sexist, and other discriminatory epithets have become our most taboo and controversial terms.”

Historically, we know that swearing was done just as much by the nobility as by commoners. For instance, Queen Elizabeth was a famous swearer who apparently favoured the colourful curse for the time, God’s wounds!” which, in later centuries transformed into Zounds!”.