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The origin of swear/bad words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| rtyhgn85 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 18 posts - 23 votes | Message 1 of 5 31 March 2011 at 11:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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every time i look up the origin of swear/bad/curse words...I never find a site that tells me how they came to be just lists the words itself, and their meanings...Does anyone know how bad words came to be, where they first came from, and who exactly came to the decision that their are bad words in all languages?
I've been wanted to know this for the longest and i never could find any good information on it..... Thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5478 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 5 31 March 2011 at 11:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are many slang dictionaries for many languages. For English slang, perhaps
http://www.slang-dictionary.com/ will help you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ikipou Diglot Newbie Norway lingua.ikipou.com/ Joined 4799 days ago 24 posts - 23 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 3 of 5 31 March 2011 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think he is not asking for a list of slangs, but how they come to life. It is an interesting question. Especially when it comes to curse words that are more or less common in many languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5575 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 5 31 March 2011 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's quite a complex topic, as swear words tend to be linked to sacred and taboo topics. So if you want to find the origin of an older swear word, you have to know something about the values and taboos of the people who invented it.
Swear words that refer to animals or body parts are usually pretty easy to understand. Bitch, for example, means "a woman who is like a female dog in heat" when used for a woman. Another example, one of the German words for whore is Dirne. It isn't commonly used in Standard German nowadays, but I do believe it is still widely understood. But in some northern dialects, there is the word Deern meaning girl, which has obviously the same origin. The origin of those two words lies in German history. During the middle ages, many free men had to give up their status as free men for economic reasons, which meant that their entire family and their children all were unfree. With this, their daughters became subject to the lords' desires. In some areas, the word became synonymous with their economical status and then with the idea of prostitution itself, whereas in other areas the word still carried the original meaning of young girl. I wasn't there, but I kind of expect one major factor in that development was how the local lords behaved ... The word hell derives from one of the darker godesses from the old Germanic pantheon and her realms. Many times, the missionaries translating and explaining the bible into new languages took names and personages the newly converted subjects already knew from their own mythology and used their image to cast a Christian interpretation onto it. One of the taboos that is present in many cultures is that you aren't supposed to say sacred words or names out of a proper ritual context. That can be the name of your god, the name of a dead person, the name of your emperor - typically, the superstitions attached to saying such a name out of the right context was that you would gather the attention of the entity (and their wrath), or might bring bad luck unto a living person. That means also that oftentimes words are made up to refer to that entity. When breaking such a taboo, it is for the purpose of "doing magic" in a society that submits to magical thinking, or to hurt somebody's feelings of piety. Cursing or swearing. Even more amusing is that the word "to swear" itself means to say holy names, originally when you were swearing an oath. In German, the word still has only that meaning (schwören), when we want to say swear/curse/cuss we use fluchen (to curse, the original meaning of jinxing somebody is still present in verfluchen) Most of the swear words I've encountered could be explained like that, as long as you have some knowledge of the culture that formed the language. (Did you notice, I did not explain why a woman behaving like a female dog in heat or a woman who prostitutes herself are considered bad and calling a woman that is an insult.) Edited by Bao on 31 March 2011 at 10:41pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5478 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 5 31 March 2011 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
That site does give you the origins of many of the terms. For example, the "F" word in English possibly comes from a similar sounding word in dutch meaning "to push", whereas the original English terms was "Swive" (from which swivel derives). The change in language also accompanies a change in the physical motion associated with mating. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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