Bad words

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 07/06/2002 8:37:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
dcamp911 at JUNO.COM writes an article which is very interesting, but which, in
my opionion, is a red herring.

>  words with French roots acquired a patrician
>  cachet while German root words for the same thing were rude (a French
>  word originally describing the unpolished ways of the peasants).
>  For that reason I can speak of a lady's derriere with impunity, even in a
>  family newspaper, but I cannot refer to it by its Germanic synonym
>  without it being obliterated by the well known parenthesized cliche. In
>  like manner I can defecate, copulate or condemn, as long as I do it in
>  French. The same words derived from German would not be allowed. They are
>  profane, coarse, or vulgar (all incidentally French words of
>  disapprobation originally describing the lower class).

(I don't care about "German" versus "Germanic" in the article.  The meaning
is clear and in a popular article probably more understandable to the lay
reader.)

Not entirely correct.  According to MWCD10, "condemn" and "damn" both come
via French from Latin "damnare".  "Piss" is also from French---compare the
name of the famous statue "Le Manequin-Pis".  "bastard" also comes from
French, but its euphemism "love child" is from two Germanic words.

One major objection:  there are languages which contain "bad words" but which
do not have English's dual linguistic heritage.  There must be some other
explanation for bad words.

Let's see.  Most English "bad words" fall into the following five classes:

1.  Religious---damn, Hell, God-damn, Jesus H. Christ (a Greek rendering of
the Hebrew/Aramaic for "Joshua the Annointed").  Note that the descriptive
words "profane", "swear", and "oath" are also words from religion.  It is
interesting that there are "four-letter" euphemisms for the above: darn,
heck, gol-darn or gosh-darn, jeez.

2.  Excretion---piss, shit, and I suppose we should include "douche-bag"

3.  Sex---make up your own list

4.  Canine---bitch, son-of-a-bitch

5.  Ethnic slurs---the infamous N-word is the most obvious.  In South Africa
they have their own equivalent of the N-word, namely "Kaffir", equally
effective for starting fights.  (According to M-W, the word is from the
Arabic).

What categories 1, 2, 3, and 5 have in common is very simple---the subjects
they are used to discuss are taboo, or more exactly there are many and
various taboos about discussing them among English speakers.  Hence there are
sub-languages within English for discussing these subjects: one for male
locker rooms, one (using words such as "derrierie") for polite socieity, etc.
 There may be a sub-language for female locker rooms, e.g. I know of a
women's dormitory where one's period was called "George".

I will leave it to the real linguists on the list to apply the proper jargon
to this idea.

As for 4), I will discuss it later if anyone's interested.

Other languages have corresponding taboos and resulting sublanguages.  Two
examples:: Yiddish "schmuck" (penis and also used. lke English "prick", as a
derogatory term for a man).  French "merde" ("shit").

Some notes about 1) religion.  The Commandment "You shall not take the Name
of the Eternal your God in vain", when interpreted as a prohibition of
blasphemy, is the only formally codified taboo in English.  (I believe
Catholics consider this to be the "Second" Commandment.)  Swearing is also
referred to as "cursing" (and its euphemism "cussing") which is interesting,
because "cursing" adds a term generally applying to witchcraft rather than to
Judaism or Christianity to a field for which most of the other descriptors
are from religion.

Conclusion:
 "bad language" are those words which are taboo in conversation among
polite/civilized/proper people.

> There was no English language at this time, making
>  degrees in English literature in the 11th Century even more useless than
>  they are today.

A math major would have been even more useless.  During the entire
Plantagenet period there were only two mathematicians in all of
England---Roger Bacon and Geoffrey Chaucer.

              - Jim Landau

P.S.  Rump Parilament?  London derriere.