Our sensitivity about 'curse' words has changed with the times

Deseret News ^ | Saturday, September 6, 2003 | Elaine Jarvik

[Mushinronshasan]

Rules of etiquette mean nothing to cretins!

The drovers of the American west cattle drives in the 19th century would heartily agree with you if anyone should refer to them as "cowboys".

"Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much."
John Wayne

[nicollo]

To what do you (or they) think 'suck' refers?

That's a good question. When I grew up (1970s), the word was the worst possible for my parents. You didn't say it. Other words weren't as much a problem, because they weren't used as much. We were just starting to separate "suck" from its implied sexual meaning, and we were starting to say it in normal conversation. For my parents, that's all it meant. For my kids now, it means "bad," and no more.

My parents used "son of a gun." They didn't know what it meant.

[Eagle Eye]

It's a term commonly used by teens and young adults. IMO, it is a slightly disparaging comment that says that something is very lame.

In some places, saying that something is "so gay" is so five minutes ago.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

So now we're down to 'mean people suck' meaning nothing, because those displaying the aphorism don't understand it, or meaning 'the hoi polloi indulge in oral intercourse'. Quite a wide range of non-meaning between the significant ends.

[nicollo]

I'll never forget the admonition of my professor of "Speech" (an unfortunate replacement for "Rhetoric") at the use of the verb "quote" as a noun by one of the students:

"When a word loses its specificity it loses its meaning."

My 1958 Webster's lists "quote" as a noun only as a colloquialism. My 1967 Random House dictionary gives it full "noun" status. Anybody use the word "quotation" any more? A piece of the language died.

You complain that "suck" no longer means its meaning. Having been removed of it, it is no longer an epithet. So if "mean people suck," so what? (I know a couple nice people that do that, too.)

[dhuffman@awod.com]

I don't know what is the significance of the bumpersticker. I am 'mean' by two of the uses of the word and enjoy oral hetero-intercourse. Are they trying to disparage or insult me? Do I give them the five-fingered wave and let them decide its meaning?

Or do I draw my sidearm, an armed society being a polite society?

[nicollo]

Lol!

[Uncle George]

Cursing a person in the old times affected only the cursee. Cursing in a movie affects MILLIONS upon MILLIONS. Like comparing a firecracker to an H bomb.

[JoeSchem]

Aren't they all really just words?

Every ancient culture attributed magical powers to words. The Bible tells of God 'speaking' the world into existence. Pagans believe that words can cast spells. And system programmers still worship at the command-line prompt.

[aruanan]

Our sensitivity about 'curse' words has changed with the times

So much so that barely anyone is even aware of what a curse is. For instance, calling Clinton an SOB is not an example of cursing; but stating "May his member shrivel and fall off" is.

[aruanan]

Put me in the stubbed-toe-violation category. I'll be working on it!

You should have heard me when I reached for the vacuum line and hit the end of the 21 gauge needle in between my middle and ring fingers.

[aruanan]

If a person becomes desensitized to the f-word, she says, it means becoming desensitized to the disrespect she believes it embodies.

Well, some of the "finest" people in society in 1700's England were known by their language. Someone speaking of a woman who was present at a public hanging said of her that she must have been a lady of distinction because of the robust nature of her cursing.

[aruanan]

The topic and comments that I have so far read are symptoms of the decay of our language. Profanity takes the name in vain. Obscenity refers to bodily functions and 'I'll know it when I see it.' A vulgarity is merely 'common' speech. In every case offense, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. In this day and age of hyperbolic speech, a good 'curse' cuts through a lot of PC bull shit.

Yes, it's too bad that so many are completely unable to make the distinctions, and yet they all think they have something to say. Someone once said that profanity is the crutch of the conversational cripple. Okay, well, perhaps it's better to have a crutch and actually get around than to be proud of being a cripple.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Ohhh, I love it! Egalitarianism would have us all cripples rather than all exceptional.

[ChemistCat]

heh heh

Well, if I can't say it in church, I shouldn't be saying it anywhere. Suppose it'll work if I say "you know what" instead of "member"? Can't have too much euphemism in church.

[aruanan]

Well, if I can't say it in church, I shouldn't be saying it anywhere. Suppose it'll work if I say "you know what" instead of "member"? Can't have too much euphemism in church.

The apostle Paul, though, referred to what he had previously considered gain as crap and also said that he wished the circumcisers would just go ahead and cut the whole thing off.

[ChemistCat]

Speaking as a woman, I'm kinda glad they don't! My husband would be WAY unfinished....

[stuartcr]

How does it affect people?

[stuartcr]

Telling someone to 'go to ....' doesn't really send them there, just as telling someone to do something to themselves, doesn't make them do it.

[Wozzeck401]

I hope not being too off-topic, but there are some curiosities about the way we brazilians use curse words that will add some information to this discussion.

First of all, I realize there's a very basic diference between the way we Portuguese speakers use bad-words from the way you English Speakers do. Our way of offending other people is ever, or almost ever, from a sexual poit of view, while in English (and in german too, I guess) there's a lot of reference to feces and excrements.
One example could be a sentence that I found quite often in movies : "Hey, kiss my a** !". I suppose the point in this statement is a kind of humiliation for the person who is to perform the kiss, in a part of the body so close to the feces or excrements. But here in Brazil the translators that work in the subtitles for the movies seem unconfortable with this, becouse for us, and our cultural sexual point of view, it sounds like a homosexual invitation, not as an offense at all.
Another example is to call somebody a "brown nose", here we'd call this kind of person a "puxa-saco" or a "balls-puller", from the most sexual point of view possible.

The only reference to excrements I can remember happens when something goes very wrong, like to hit a finger with a hammer, and most of us would shout "merda!", very like the french, that is "sh*t!". But we could hear also a lot of "Puta que pariu!", that is a kind of "whore that has gave birth to!" (gave birth to the hammer, in this case) or "que buceta!", (what a vagina!).

The teenagers from here use to curse all the time too, and the most commom is "a fuder!", (good to f**k), "do caralho!" or "bom pra cacete!" (from the pennis, or good to the pennis), all used as an adjective meaning "very good, or cool". They use a lot of "vai te fuder!" too, that is very like your "Go f**k yourself!". Also there's the "Aqui oh!"(here!), that is complemented by a gesture pointing to your own genitals, or the big finger of the hand, sugesting an invitation to the offended to perform felation with the ofender.

Living in a place with a lot of Italian imigration, we used to hear the older people use religious words and sentences to curse when they were really angry. It was common to hear somebody shouting "Puta Madonna!"(Whore Virgen Mary!), "Porco Dio!"(Pig God!), and some less profano like "Sacramento!"(Sacrament), "Ostia!"(Host, holy bread !). These statements were ever very, very loud and pronunced, in a good Italian fashion. Today even the younger use this way to curse, but in a quite "funny" way, just to mimic the tradition of olders.

This account just to the very south of Brazil, and I should say that we are one of the states that use these bad word the less. Even teens know they are being wrong when saying that close to the olders, or women, and most of them respect, or at least be quite embarrassed. More to the North, like Rio de Janeiro, the commom people is very offensive, IMO, and the streets and schools are much more "dirty" from the bad-speaking point o view.

While writing these lines, I realized that all these words don't have a real meaning, and the proof is that when making the tranlations, when we are obligated to consider the meaning, everything loses sense or sound very un-natural. I find that's why more and more people use these bad words, becouse they are becoming just sounds, quasi non-semantic sounds, that just express rage or anything else.

Forgive my eventual spell errors :)

Wozzeck