Language!

The subject of "alternative cuss words" came up in a recent Language Hat post, and I was reminded of an ancient post of my own from 2009 which I thought I'd revive. Here it is, slightly expanded and edited to 2024 specs, as usual. You lucky people!

Gadzooks!

Our swearing is a good barometer of the sensibilities of our culture. A casual racial epithet becomes an unsayable, unforgivable insult. Yesterday's blood-curdling blasphemy fizzles out into a meaningless comic noise in a children's cartoon. I doubt anyone today would be much offended if I exclaimed "God's blood!" when I hit my thumb with a hammer, although they might be startled. It would have been a different matter in the seventeenth century, when I could easily have found myself having my ears nailed to a post (I have no idea how they did that... Maybe ears were bigger then? Or perhaps they used two posts?). I suppose in the USA, where the alignment of Christianity and respectability still seems (to European eyes) anachronistically close, taking the Lord's name in vain – not to mention other attributes or body parts – may still be quite offensive to some people. Although they've probably got over the ear-mutilating thing by now. 'Snails, I should hope so!

Fondness for one's unpierced ears may have been what led to the evolution of so-called "minced oaths", that is, allusive expletives used in place of actual offensive swearing. The pioneering classics are those musketeerish ejaculations like "Gadzooks!" and "Zounds!", but to an extent we're still at it, albeit unknowingly. For obvious reasons, a minced oath usually starts with the same sound as the "real" oath it masks. For example, all those strange exclamations like "Cripes," "Crikey," and "Crivvens" are clearly substitutes for "Christ!". Not so long ago in Britain the ubiquitous "bloody" was a genuinely taboo adjective, although no-one seems sure why: I have seen various explanations, including the suggestion that "bloody" is itself a minced-oath version of "by Our Lady". Hence the abundant use of adjectives like "blinking", "blooming", or "blasted" in the everyday speech of people averse to full-on vulgarity; "ruddy" is an unusual rhyming variation that was common in my childhood years, but seems to have fallen completely out of use. Interestingly, I suspect the relative paucity of exclamations beginning "sh..." betrays the relatively recent adoption of "Shit!" as an all-purpose expression of dismay, at least in Britain. "Sugar!" is the only one that comes to mind (although "Sh... urely not!" was my personal recourse when our kids were small).

Of course, any true puritan will find even a minced oath offensive, because it points pretty directly and transparently at the thing it purports to hide, like tight clothing or swimwear. But then the ability to find offence where none is intended is the hallmark of the puritan down the ages, from Cromwell to the Taliban and the extremists of self-righteous "wokeness". By contrast, a true innocent will happily use some of the merrier minced oaths, completely unaware of the big sign pointing at the taboo word they have, apparently, narrowly avoiding saying (and which, once upon a more genteel time, they actually might never have come across). Oh, fudge and fiddlesticks! I also doubt whether many who exclaim "Gosh!" or "Golly!" in an Enid Blighton-ish way, ironically or not, are either aware or care that they are thereby avoiding the Mosaic commandment (number three, in fact) against "taking God's name in vain". Really? My goodness!

I have never really understood the contemporary fondness for swearing among the professional classes, especially the claim that it is hypocritical not to do so and prissy to find it offensive when deployed by others. But, having grown up in a respectable working-class / lower-middle-class milieu, I will concede that I am not best placed, instinctively, to understand. I literally never heard my parents or the parents of any of my friends swear. Not once. It would have been utterly unthinkable, in the 1950s and 60s, for any halfway-respectable adult knowingly to swear in front of children, even if they habitually used "effing and blinding" at work. Similarly, we kids (who rejoiced in using "language" between ourselves) would never have sworn in front of – never mind at – an adult. I did once tell my grandmother, at the prompting of a friend, to "buzz off" (a minced version of "bugger off ," as I now realise), with the terrifying result that she chased me down the street, incandescent with rage. I received a rare smack that evening for my impertinence.

In Britain, and I imagine elsewhere, the true traditional swearers are all-male communities and the upper classes [1]. Naturally, you would expect the occupants of a barrack-room, being troopers, to be swearing like troopers; it would be disappointing if they didn't. That the likes of Winston Churchill also did and still do when at their ease can come as something of a surprise. But, as Terry Eagleton once pointed out in a review of Isaiah Berlin's letters, members of elite establishments tend to "mistake a snobbish contempt for the shopkeeping classes for a daring kind of dissidence." What better way to underline your distance from and contempt for the genteel classes than a judicious sprinkling of witty vulgarity? On the positive side, I suppose, to hear the ambassador say, "Well, that was a fucking débâcle, wasn't it?" – enunciated impeccably after a difficult meeting – establishes that everyone still in the room is an honorary equal, and indubitably on the same side.

Having gradually slipped over the years into unnecessary swearing, I decided to wean myself off it once we had children. Other parents we knew had gone down the opposite route, which was to inoculate their kids against a wicked world by freely sprinkling the taboo words (or a politically-correct subset thereof) into the family conversation. Call me old-fashioned, but I wince when I hear an under-ten say, "But I don't want any fucking cornflakes, Mummy!" I suppose if you live in London such prophylactic precautions may be necessary. Not in my house, though.

In the initial phase of decontamination, I was substituting the most kid-friendly oaths I could think of, which was effective, but did have some odd results. A 40-year old man roaring, "Sh...urely not! I've hit my silly old finger with the silly old hammer!" does admittedly make for an amusing spectacle (for the spectators, at least). Then, having trained myself not to swear at home by substituting nursery equivalents – supplemented in extremis by gritted-teeth endearments like "sweetheart" and "darling" – I found this had started to bleed over into my work life, which could get acutely embarrassing when, squashing down annoyance, I began to sound like some theatrical type: "You've entered the wrong code again, my darling! That's why your silly old terminal has frozen!" What a relief it was when the kids started to swear like troopers / fishwives themselves, and I could finally uncork years of suppressed profanity. Fucking hell! What a relief... Although, it has to be said, this was less of a relief for my staff.

But I do try to remain largely oathless – well, much of the time – and I must admit it feels right, if only because I would never carry myself physically in that sort of swaggering, bullying way intended to intimidate others [2], and I can see no reason to behave any differently in my language. If there is one thing the world could do without, it is people who revel in their own strength and inviolability without concern for the impact of their boorish behaviour on others. A society which is careless of the needs and feelings of the vulnerable or the old is a malformed society, simply. When it comes to language, even the prissily genteel deserve consideration. Well, a little, anyway. Sometimes. They are not my favourite people, I confess. Hypocritical ████s, most of them.

However, one argument against swearing that I can't accept is the assertion that it reduces one's ability to express oneself, by constricting the habitual swearer's vocabulary. Which is bollocks. Take, for example, this splendid concatenation, which many people claim to have heard, typically booming from somewhere like the pit of a car maintenance garage, but which is probably either apocryphal or somewhat embroidered: "Fucking fuck it! This fucking fucker's fucking fucked!" Meaningless? Inexpressive? Real or not, this is an exemplary demonstration, surely, of a single word's protean power, when used with conviction in appropriate circumstances. Accept no flipping substitutes!

1. True, I have no idea what filthy banter goes on in all-female company: "fish-wives", after all, were as proverbial as troopers for the saltiness of their language.

2. Sources close to this blog have pointed out the unlikeliness of this scenario, despite my imposing height of  5' 6" (168cm).