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 disrespectful, foul, obscene, or in any case hostile. Additionally known asâ swearing, terrible word, revolting word, messy word, and four-letter word. Swear words serve a wide range of capacities in various social settings, notes Janet Holmes. They may communicate disturbance, animosity and affront, for example, or they may communicate solidarity and amicability (An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 2013). EtymologyFrom Old English, make a vow Models and Observations Spock: Your utilization of language has changed since our appearance. It is as of now bound with, will we say, increasingly bright 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 mark or offer exhortation to somebody who has cut us off in rush hour gridlock. There are disgusting terms for regular things and exercises, as when Bess Truman was approached to get the president to state compost rather than excrement and she answered, You have no clue to what extent it took me to get him to state fertilizer. There are hyperboles that put indecent words to different utilizations, for example, the farm designation for untrustworthiness, the military abbreviation disaster, and the gynecological-flagellative term for uxorial predominance. And afterward there are the modifier like interjections that salt the discourse and split the expressions of fighters, young people, Australians, and others influencing a windy 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 a therapist, 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 condition. . . .Normally, a social swear word starts as one of the terrible words yet gets conventionalised in an unmistakably social structure. Utilizing swear words as free intensifiers adds to the accommodating, 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 sign ificant moves in the focal point of swearing have been from strict issues (all the more particularly the breaking of the rule against maligning the Lords name) to sexual and real capacities, and from derogatory 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 terrible. Theyd must be over the top to be isolated from a gathering that huge. Every one of you here . . . You seven, you awful words.Thats what they let us know, you recall? That is an awful word. What? There are no terrible words. Awful musings, awful aims, yet 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 government officials endeavor to be down with the kidsor for this situation, with the thirtysomethings. . . .Inquired as to why he didnt utilize the long range interpersonal communication site Twitter, the Tory head stated: The issue with Twitter, the instantn ess of ittoo numerous jokes may make a twat. . . .[T]he Tory pioneers associates were in protective mode a while 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 indicators, or such irrationality as b-, which are only a cop out, as Charlotte Brontã « perceived: The act of implying by single letters those exclamations with which profane and fierce individuals are wont to embellish their talk, strikes me as a procedure which, anyway all around implied, is feeble and pointless. I can't determine what great it doeswhat feeling it spareswhat frightfulness it conceals.(David Marsh and Amelia Hodsdon, Guardian Style, third ed. Watchman Books, 2010)Supreme Court Rulings on Swear WordsThe Supreme Court’s last significant case concerning communicate obscenity, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation in 1978, maintained the commission’s assurance that George Carlin’s exemplary seven grimy words monolog, with its conscious, tedious and inventive utilization of vulgarities, was disgusting. However, the court left open the subject of whether the utilization of an incidental swearword could be punished.The case chosen Tues day, 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 interesting shorthand for the filthy words.The first included Cher, who considered her vocation 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 like to think, Justice Scalia clarified that Cher figuratively recommended a sexual go about as a methods for communicating threatening 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 disgusting terms the challenges in clearing dairy animals fertilizer off a Prada purse.Reversing its approach on such temporary interjections, the commission said in 2006 that the two communicates were foul. It didn't make a differe nce, 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 disconnected and evidently extemporaneous. . . .In turning around that choice, Justice Scalia said the adjustment in strategy was objective and in this manner allowable. It was surely sensible, he composed, to establish that it look bad to recognize exacting and nonliteral employments of hostile words, requiring dreary use to render just the last indecent.Justice John Paul Stevens, disagreeing, composed that few out of every odd utilization of a swear word implied something very similar. As any golf player who has watched his accomplice shank a short methodology knows, Justice Stevens composed, it is preposterous to acknowledge the proposal that the resultant four-letter word articulated on the green depicts sex or fertilizer and is along these lines indecent.It is amusing, without a doubt, Justice Stevens we nt on, that while the F.C.C. watches the wireless transmissions for words that have a shaky relationship with sex or feces, ads communicate during prime-time hours as often as possible 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 in real time. 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) Exchange Spellings: swearword, swear-word