Editors Stan Carey and James Harbeck write about the English language on their blogs, Sentence first and Sesquiotica. Stan and James co-founded Strong Language, a blog for linguists, lexicographers, and word nerds who like vulgarities. Here, they tell us how the site was born, comment on people’s attitudes on profanity over time, and share their favorite swear words.
How did Strong Language come about?
Many of the cursing connoisseurs at Strong Language publish with WordPress.
Stan: That was a happy accident. I was chatting with linguist James Harbeck about something he’d written for The Week on expletive infixation (like abso-bloody-lutely). There were words he couldn’t include because they’d be censored, and we both tend to stay family-friendly on our own blogs, so James suggested teaming up to create a sweary blog about swearing. I proposed Strong Language as a name, James kicked off with a post on cussword phonology, and we soon had an amazing team of linguists, lexicographers, editors and other word specialists contributing. It’s been foul-mouthed fun ever since.
Are there words (or types of swear words) you won’t cover on the site? Is anything too offensive for your taste?
Popular posts on Strong Language:
Mapping the United Swears of America
What gives “cunt” its offensive power?
Stan: I don’t think any taboo terms are off limits for Strong Language — it would go against the blog’s spirit of scientific enquiry. There are certainly swears I don’t use: racial epithets, ableist slurs, that sort of thing. But that’s different from examining their use.
As a linguist, do you sense a change in people’s attitudes towards swearing over time? Are we more or less profane than, say, ten years ago?
Stan: Ten years is too short for any major shifts, but attitudes do change. Even in Chaucer’s day, though, there was huge variety in how people felt about swearing. Whether we’re becoming more profane is debatable, but we are more visibly so, because the internet has sidestepped the traditional filters on what language we see and hear. It affects the type of swearing too, hence the vogue for super-abbreviated forms like af and tf.
On a longer timescale there’s a shift from swearing by (and to) higher powers, to just swearing at things and people. Centuries ago religious swears were stronger, which led to strange euphemisms like ’snails (God’s nails) and odsbodikins (God’s little body). Religious swears in most English-speaking communities are less taboo now than sexual swears, and even those are losing their force for many people. I’m not trained as a linguist, by the way — I just dabble.
James: I am trained as a linguist, and I agree with Stan. 🙂
Which swear word fascinates you the most?
Stan: Probably fuck. How many words have a whole dictionary devoted to them? It’s so versatile, and has shown up in all sorts of curious places historically, like surnames and bird names — centuries ago, kestrels could be called windfuckers, for example. Fuck still carries force, so it has a lot of euphemistic spin-offs, but it’s also very popular, so we get these playful memes like Look at all the fucks I give. I also like shite, bollocks, and religious oaths, and combinations of these with fuck. You get that a lot in Ireland.
More on morphosyntactic infractions: consider the insertion in “abso-fucking-lutely” and conversions such as “cunting.”
James: Along with the words (I am also a big fan of fuck), I also like the kinds of morphosyntactic infractions people sometimes get up to when swearing. Sometimes people seem to want to deliberately break rules of grammar in swearing just as they’re breaking rules of propriety — although I must say that in general swearing is just as rule-observing as anything else in speech.
What language has the best swear words? Do you have a favorite foreign swear word that’s hard (or impossible) to translate?
Irish Gaelic is full of colorful insults, and has a fine tradition of sinister but hilarious curses…
Stan: I couldn’t pick one language — there’s amazingly crude and creative swearing in so many. Some, like the Slavic languages and Spanish, have a well-earned reputation. I adopted some German and French swears when I learned those languages, but I seldom use them now. Irish Gaelic is full of colorful insults, and has a fine tradition of sinister but hilarious curses, like Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat, which means: May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat.
I’m most entertained by the liturgical swearing of Québecois French: câlice de tabarnac d’hostie de ciboire.
James: I’ve read that Serbians are especially inventive, but I don’t speak Serbian. I know the Dutch use kanker (cancer) a lot, which I find entertaining. But, being from Canada, I’m most entertained by the liturgical swearing of Québecois French: câlice de tabarnac d’hostie de ciboire. Sometimes I’ll say “chalice of tabernacle” in English in place of “dammit.” The thing about translating swears is that literal translations often seem silly, but a good translator would translate them idiomatically whenever possible, so you have to find the best match of tone and connotation. It’s never going to be an exact match, but in general use it’s often good enough.
How profane are you in your daily life?
Stan: In public, not very; in certain company or by myself, pretty sweary. It varies. I’ve never recorded my daily speech, so I don’t know how I compare with others. But I like having a wide range of swears available for amusement, venting, and so on.
James: I swear too fucking much, generally. For a while in my department at work we kept score, and at the end of each month we would have to contribute to a group lunch at the rate of 5¢ per damn, 10¢ per shit, 25¢ per fuck (and, at a coworker’s insistence, $2 per cunt, so we never used that word, but we would sometimes refer to someone as two dollars). One co-worker — female — always edged me out by a buck or two, but we were both generally over $10 per month, I think.
Visit Strong Language for more. You can also find Stan Carey at Sentence first and @stancarey and James Harbeck at Sesquiotica and @sesquiotic.
Since fuck and its variations as both noun and verb was necessary as the second or third word in every sentence in the armed forces, like any sharp tool it not only lost its edge in common speech amongst the military in WWII where I picked it up but it simply fell below notice. Norman Mailer, in his initial novel, had to substitute fug for the word to give his acceptable dialog any semblance to reality. Since the word is totally common, currently, in many popular films it does strike me as odd that certain written and spoken venues forbid it totally.
In Helsinki, where I now live, vittu (vagina) and satana perkele are popular. The latter has something to do with the devil but I don’t know what.
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It’s truly a word that used in my speech often especially when I’ve forgotten something it’s also my favorite curse word.
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I quite enjoy swearing in life (although I don’t in my blog) because there are times when “Oh dear” simply won’t do…
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Swearing doesn’t make an icky person good or a boring person interesting, but it makes a good person better and a funny person funnier. (Just my two fucking cents worth).
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I fucking love this.
Good job!
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Fuck yeah that was a good post !
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Many people aren’t so open to the use of cuss words in day to day usage, but now I do think things are changing….the tolerance towards swearing will definitely improve 🙂
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I never could have imagined reading about swearing words could be so Fun!!
The best line was
Stan: I couldn’t pick one language — there’s amazingly crude and creative swearing in so many.
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What has not so far been fully indicated is the function of this type of word. In the army the word fuck is not, insofar as I understand, is no longer a swear word since it is no longer offensive. The point of swearing is to verbally convey an emotional explosion to shock the listener and relieve emotional tension. Fuck is totally innocent in army situations and has become what might be called a fossil swearword since it conveys little if any shock.
When my family lived in New York and my two and three year olds were learning Finnish from my Finnish wife they both latched onto a Finnish swear vocabulary very quickly so, in order to divert this towards more acceptability I invented the non-existent expression “qwensico makkara” which has no meaning and told them it was the worst Finnish swearword never to be spoken. Thereby it displaced real swearwords very efficiently.
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I grew up with a father who swore so poetically.
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Frig-o-licously delicious for the suppressed soul – far more effective than the therapist’s couch and free to boot!
Used discriminately it is to be a “witty fool” – the iron fist inside the velvet glove.
Every culture has it’s gems and India has some beauties – crude but oh so concise! To quote in English will indeed be ‘lost in translation’.
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As a veteran female swearer, I would love your take on the equality (groan) issue.
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I like the word fuck as well!
Trying to decide if I used too much in my first post though. Any thoughts?
https://onlifethingsandthoughts.wordpress.com
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I think swearing creates a certain effect in posts, and also may simply be a natural part of a writer’s voice, although I think it’s possible to use *too much* — I think some of the fucks and shits in your post are fine and help to make a point, but I personally thought some of it wasn’t necessary — and distracted me from what you were actually saying. I guess, overall, swear words can be occasional exclamation points in your writing, but don’t let them undermine your otherwise thoughtful discussion.
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Thank you for taking the time to respond, Cheri! I like the idea of thinking of them as exclamation points. I re-read my post in that light and it was clear as day where I needed to make edits. So I did. And I think it’s better for it.
Gracias!
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I donot know.. Actually we are living in a generation where swearing doesn’t seem a big deal. However, some people still judge people by it…
Anyways , good writing . It was fun to read about swearing 🙂
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There are a couple of problems with profanity. I understand its use and appreciate its shock effect but it has the potential to obliterate belief in the valid angers of the writer or speaker and thereby destroy the effectiveness of a declaration. It is also i bit too easy a style of indicating anger without establishing the solid ground for the emotion. One must be a bit more skilled in writing to convey the power of an emotion without using the easy shock effect of profanity. Nevertheless, when I hit my thumb instead of a nail with a hammer I am not in the mood to be linguistically clever.
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I agree. It is mainly used to validate your anger. However, today’s generation uses more for style and to show the so called “coolness” in them. I am totally against it. But sometimes you just need to be quiet and understand the real meaning behind what they are saying and then react.
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How entertaining 😀 Rarely do you find this perspective on swearing. One thing that I really find interesting about swearing is how people who don’t do it come up with harmless alternatives like “dang” in stead of “damn”. to me that suggests that there is some kind of need for swear words, but I wonder what purspose they serve that other words can’t. I’m not saying this in a judgemental way, but I’m actually curious about why we seem to need strong language in certain situations.
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Great fucking read
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This idea is fan-fucking-tastic! I love the idea the writers had of starting the blog and the idea about telling its story! Very entertaining!
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I am a Spanish speaker from the Southern Cone. Our teenagers from the upper classes (I mean, those attending private schools where they have lots of English lessons) include from time to time the expression “What a fuck?” in their speech.
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Great interview, sometimes swearing is needed and actually beneficial. Use the power wisely 😉
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👍
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A very controversial subject; which has been difficult to address, for years. This Blog adds: humour, drama, tactfulness and creativity; to what was once a forbidden taboo; and, at present is, to some extent, acceptable.
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Among other things about profanity, what I find interesting is the amount of energy involved in suppressing it. It implies that language, aside from its power to convey information and emotion has something of magic about it like a witches curse or a defiance of a deity. It is only lately in technology that inanimate things like computers can be commanded by spoken language. No one these days must command a door with “open sesame” since intellectual doors open at our approach but to command a god with “God damn it!” does still evoke a bit of fear at how a god might react.
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