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Profanity

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In cartoons, profanity is often depicted by substituting symbols ("grawlixes") for words, as a form of non-specific censorship.

The original meaning of the adjective profane (Latin: "in front of", "outside the temple") referred to items not belonging to the church, e.g. "The fort is the oldest profane building in the town, but the local monastery is older, and is the oldest building," or "besides designing churches, he also designed many profane buildings".

As a result, "profane" and "profanity" has therefore come to describe a word, expression, gesture, or other social behavior which is socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, desecrating, or showing disrespect.

Other words commonly used to describe profane language or its use include: curse, pejorative language, swearing, expletive, oath, bad word, dirty word, strong language, irreverent language, obscenity language, choice words, blasphemy language, foul language, and bad or adult language.

Statistics

Tape-recorded conversations find that roughly 80–90 spoken words each day—0.5% to 0.7% of all words—are swear words with people varying from between 0% to 3.4%. In comparison first person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words.

Research looking at swearing in 1986, 1997, and 2006 in America found the same top ten words were used of a set of over 70 different swear words. The most used swear words were fuck, shit, hell, damn, goddamn, ass, bitch, and crap—these eight made up roughly 80% of all profanities. Two words, fuck and shit, accounted for one third to one half of them.

Types of profanity

Steven Pinker's book The Stuff of Thought breaks profanity down into five categories:

• Dysphemistic profanity – which explicitly forces the listener to think about negative or provocative matter. Using the wrong euphemism has a dysphemistic effect. (Ex: "I have to take a shit")
• Abusive profanity – for abuse or intimidation or insulting of others (Ex: "Fuck you, you fucking cocksucker!")
• Idiomatic profanity – swearing without really referring to the matter. Just using the words to arouse interest, to show off, and express to peers that the setting is informal. (Ex: "Shit, I was pretty fucked up last night.")
• Emphatic swearing – to emphasize something with swearing. (Ex: "I'm not going to do a fucking thing!" The word "fucking" emphasizes his refusal to do anything)
• Cathartic profanity – when something bad happens like coffee spilling, people curse. (Ex: "Shit, my coffee just fell!")

According to Pinker, the content of profane language can also be broken into five categories of negative emotion:

• The Supernatural – Evokes emotions of awe & fear. (Ex: "What the bloody hell is going on, here?")
• Bodily effluvia & organs – Evokes disgust, since effluvia are major disease vectors. (Ex: "I'm gonna go take a piss.")
• Disease, Death, & Infirmity – Evokes dread, fear of death or disability. These are words which are normally avoided or treated euphemistically. (Ex: "This dude's fucked up in the head" as opposed to "This man has Down syndrome.")
• Sexuality – Evokes images of revulsion at depravity. Profanity of a sexual nature conjures images of illegitimate or exploitive sexuality, jealousy, etc. (Ex: "That faggot loves to suck on fucking fat ass dicks.")
• Disfavoured people or groups – Evokes hatred and contempt. Such groups include infidels, the disabled (e.g.: gimp,), enemies (e.g.: sand monkey), or subordinated groups. These include racist words and/or insults based on gender or sexual preferences. (Ex: "That cracker fired me cuz I'm a nigger!")

Profanity as blasphemy

The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or saying God's name (or an identifier such as "Lord" or "God") in vain. Profanity represented secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, and considered sinful.

Profanities in the original meaning of blasphemous profanity are part of the ancient tradition of the comic cults, which laughed and scoffed at the deity or deities. An example from Gargantua and Pantagruel is "Christ, look ye, its Mere de ... merde ... shit, Mother of God."

Severity

The relative severity of various British profanities, as perceived by the public, was studied on behalf of the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority; the results of this jointly commissioned research were published in December 2000 in a paper called "Delete Expletives". It listed the profanities in order of decreasing severity, the top ten being cunt, motherfucker, fuck, wanker, nigger, bastard, prick, bollocks, arsehole, and paki in that order. About 83% of respondents regarded cunt as "very severe"; 16% thought the same about shit and 10% about crap. Only about 1% thought cunt was "not swearing"; 9% thought the same about shit and 32% of crap.

International auxiliary languages

Distinct international auxiliary languages usually apply different strategies to coin or borrow profane words and expressions.

In Interlingua, the fundamental criterion for inclusion is widespread international use, and this can be as true of a profanity as any other word or phrase. Thus, expressions such as cunno (cunt), merda (shit), and pipi (pee-pee) may be used in Interlingua. Culo (ass or butt) and its derivative incular (to butt-fuck) are also Interlingua expressions. Futer (to fuck) is used much as in English, e.g., "Fute te!" ("Fuck you!") or "Mi automobile es futite!" ("My car is fucked!").

For Esperanto, see Esperanto profanity.

Books and movies containing famous uses of profanity

• Ulysses by James Joyce
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
• Various books by François Rabelais
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn", said in 1939, was the first use of profanity in a major American film.

See also

Look up profanity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Blasphemy
• Profanum
• Damnation
• Spanish profanity
• Profanity by language
• Category of English profanity
• Latin profanity
• List of ethnic slurs
• Minced oath
• Obscenity
• Profanity in American Sign Language
• Profanity in Science Fiction
• Seven dirty words
• Swear filter

Notes

References

• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World, [1941]. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
• Bulcke, Camille (2001), An English-Hindi Dictionary (3 ed.), Ramnagar, New Delhi: S. Chand And Company Ltd., ISBN 81-219-0559-1 .
• Almond, Ian Derrida and the Secret of the Non-Secret: On Respiritualising the Profane Literature and Theology 2003 17(4):457-471; doi:10.1093/litthe/17.4.457

Further reading

• Edward Sagarin. The Anatomy of Dirty Words. 1962
• Bill Bryson. The Mother Tongue. 1990.
• Sterling Johnson. Watch Your F*cking Language. 2004.
• Geoffrey Hughes. Swearing. 2004.
• Ruth Wajnryb. Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language. 2005.
• Jesse Sheidlower. The F-Word. 2009. (3rd ed.)

External links

• Urban Dictionary: A slang/profanity dictionary with user-submitted definitions.
• The Profanisaurus: A dictionary of profanities, aptly called a Profanisaurus, from Viz magazine with user-submitted definitions.
• Video Games Suck: Example of a website that uses profanity for entertainment.