Profanity

A common cartoonish depiction of profanity substituting symbols for words.

Profanity is “the quality or state of being profane”, it can also relate to using profane language. “1) to treat (something sacred) with abuse, irreverence, or contempt: Desecrated. 2) to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use." It can be a word, expression, gesture, or other social behavior—which is socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, or/and vulgar. Many times profanity is conducted under colloquialism.

Lingo often applied as Profanity: cuss, curse, swearing, expletive, oath, bad word, dirty word, strong language, irreverent language, obscene language, blasphemous language, and foul mouthed.

Usage

A profanity will have an original meaning (which may change across time and language) which in itself may give some cause for offence. Additionally, many profanities will have applied meanings of their own, usually associated to their context and which therefore may vary significantly depending upon the intended purpose of the word in the sentence. For example; fuck, a profanity in English, has come to be a verb for the sexual act and may be used literally in this sense - "I fucked that bitch", but also in the context of an exclamation, "Fuck, he's clever!", as part of a derogatory remark - "Fuck off!" or to simply add weight to a sentence - "This is fucking interesting!". The degree to which a profanity is offensive is a highly subjective matter as it relies upon how the use of the word affects an individual or group of individuals. Some will consider the original meaning of a word (for example, the sexual act) as being offensive or as a subject not fit for polite conversation (sexual acts, sexual references or reference to bodily parts, or religiously sensitive subjects) whilst others will have no objection to these subject matters and therefore words used to describe them.

Some will feel that certain words, having an established social taboo associated with them, are simply offensive by themselves, regardless of any context in which they are used; others will find profanities offensive mainly when used in a way deliberately intended to offend or insult, but less offensive in other contexts, such as a neutral exclamation.

Furthermore, some people may be in the habit of using highly insulting language (which may include profanity) for style or comedy purpose, especially amongst friends or familiar company where the intention is either not to insult or is to apply only a very mild insult. Thus, otherwise highly offensive insults can be used as terms of endearment - "How's it going, motherfucker?"

Finally, profanities may cause offence, regardless of context, if they have some religious meaning which may cause their use to offend those who follow a particular religion. The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or saying the Abrahamic god's name (or an identifier such as "Lord" or "God") in vain. Profanity in this context could be represented as a secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a direct attack on them, often interpreted as such, even when the intent was not to do so.

As the concept of a profanity has been extended to include expressions with scatological, sexist, derogatory, racist, or sexual interpretations, the broader concept of 'socially unacceptable' language has emerged, with religious meaning playing a varying role, and the more vague and inclusive interpretation blurring the distinction between categories of offensiveness. This modern concept of profanity, has evolved differently throughout different cultures and languages. For example, many profanities in Canadian French are a corruption of religious terminology (the sacres), while many English obscenities tend to reference sexuality. A term which functions as a profanity in one language may often lack any profane quality when translated into another language.

History

Terms of profanity have historically been taboo words. Some words that were originally considered profane have become much less offensive with the increasing secularity of society. Others, primarily racial or ethnic epithets, can be considered part of hate speech.

William Shakespeare hinted at the word cunt in Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Henry V: Hamlet makes reference to "country matters" when he tries to lay his head in Ophelia's lap; Malvolio has the salacious line "These be her very c's, her u's, and her t's, and thus she makes her great p's"; and the French Princess Katherine is amused by the word gown for its similarity to the French con. Interestingly, the word "cunt," while retaining its original meaning in America, has changed in meaning somewhat in Great Britain in the past thirty years. Where American usage of the word mostly refers to either female anatomy or (in extreme cases) an ill-tempered woman, "cunt" in the UK has attained the status of a gender-neutral insult, akin to asshole etc.

In the U.S. today, terminology considered to be racist is often seen as more offensive than sexual or scatological terminology; this is most clearly shown in the attention given to use of the word nigger, now effectively banned in American public discourse, although many black people use the word "nigga" as a casual reference, more than most whites do in their normal conversations (though in certain racist or racially-biased social groups, "nigger" as a casual reference to black people is still in frequent use). Some mistakenly associate the word niggardly (meaning "stingy") with the word nigger. As with other types of profanity, context is very important; thus, Americans of African descent might use the word nigger, or the related nigga, in informal situations among themselves, without being considered offensive.

Many of the words now considered most 'profane' are held to be so because they were created to insult and disparage a particular group (see pejorative terms). Some of the targets of these words have however attempted to reclaim them and reduce their power as insults (see, for example, queer and nigger). Other ethnic slurs like "chink" (East Asian person), "spic" (Hispanic), "wop(s)" (Italian), "kraut" (German--used especially during World War II), "beaner" (Mexican or Guatemalan native), "raghead" or"towelhead" (Arab Moslem); and pejoratives like "fattie", "cripple", "retard", and "redneck" aren't entirely profane to a society, but can be considered very offensive when used in the company of certain people, and not socially accepted in polite settings or social situations.

The offensiveness or perceived intensity or vulgarity of the various profanities can change over time, with certain words becoming more or less offensive as time goes on. For example, in modern times the word piss is usually considered mildly vulgar and somewhat impolite, whereas the King James Bible unblushingly employs it where modern translators would prefer the word urine (2 Kings 18:27; Isa 36:12) or urinate (1 Sam 25:22, 25:34; 1 Kings 14:10, 16:11, 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8). The word cunt has seen a similar evolution; its ancestor ("queynte") was not considered vulgar at all, but the word is now considered among the most offensive words in the English language.

Profanity as blasphemy, scoff, curse and insult at deity

The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or saying the Abrahamic god's name (or an identifier such as "Lord" or "God") in vain. Profanity represented a secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, and religious people consider it 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. In the Middle Ages Europe the most improper and sinful "oaths" where those invoking the body of the Lord and its various parts, as the Italian Pote de Christo! ("Christ's cunt"), and these were precisely the oaths most frequently used. An examples from Gargantua and Pantagruel is "Christ, look ye, its Mere de . . . merde . . . shit, Mother of God."

Severity

The relative severity of the 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 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% crap. Only about 1% thought cunt was "not swearing"; 9% thought the same about shit and 32% crap.

It is notable that there is a significant difference between the US and Britain in this regard: wanker is relatively unknown as a swearword, bollocks (in the variant bollixed) is unexceptional, The first two words feature on occasion on primetime US TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Interlanguage

The situation is rendered even more complex when other languages enter the picture. Merde in French, and Mist in German (both usually translated as shit) are also quite common, as well as Italian and Portuguese Merda or Spanish Mierda. While German and some other languages' profanity seems to focus on elimination, profanities in many Romance languages tend to make reference to religion, and English profanity tends to be sexual in nature. Italian represents an exception here, due to the massive use of Cazzo and Fica (translated as dick and cunt, with the latter being less insulting than English) in common speech; both are very common in the Italian language and both have, for the most part, lost their vulgar meaning. Likewise, in European Spanish, coño (usually translated as cunt in English) is very common in informal spoken discourse, meaning no more than "Hey!". Its frequent use by Spaniards led to the labelling of the class of Filipinos with Spanish ancestry as konyos.

Some scholars have noted that while the French and Spanish are comfortable hearing native speakers use these words, they tend to hear the "stronger" meaning when the same words are spoken by non-native speakers. This may be similar to the differences in the acceptability of queer or nigger depending on who is saying the words. Or it may be an example of how it is easier to learn swear words in a new language or dialect than to learn the fine shades of intensity which accompany their use.

A profane word in one language often sounds like an ordinary word in another. Fuck sounds like the French words for seal (phoque) and jib (foc), the Spanish words for seal (foca) and lightbulb (foco) or the Irish word for words (focail), as well as the Romanian word for do (I do can be fac eu, which sounds a lot like the English fuck you). Arabic for "think" sounds just like "you fucker". Also, Croatian phrase fakat sounds similar to English "fuck at" when it actually means "really". 'Fuck' also sounds like the Latin imperative singular form of "do" or "make" ("fac"), the Swedish word for union (fack) and the Dutch word for " trade" or "pigeon hole" (vak) ; shit sounds somewhat like the Russian for "shield" (щит). The Cantonese words for "flower" and "bridge" when said together ("fa kyu") sounds vaguely similar to "fuck you," as does the Latin word for "I do" ("facio"). Also, the Latin singular imperative of "say" ("dic") and the Dutch word for "fat" ("dik") are pronounced like the English "dick". The German word for "fat" is both spelled and pronounced as the word "dick" in English. Even names in one language may appear as vulgar words in another linguistic community, which causes many immigrants to change their names (common Vietnamese personal names include Phuc and Bich; a fairly common Thai name is Porn.). A particular coincidence is the Hungarian and Spanish and Italian words for curve: Spanish curva sounds like a Slavic, Romanian and Hungarian kurva meaning "prostitute" (or, more offensively, "whore"), and Hungarian kanyar sounds like coño, mentioned above. The word con is a profanity in French, but simply means "with" in Spanish and Italian. Apparently, L.L. Zamenhof chose kurba as the Esperanto word for "curved" to avoid the Slavic profanity evoked by the more etymological *kurva. See another example in Laputa. Additionally, puta is genitive and accusative case of two often used words in south Slavic languages; but in Portuguese and Spanish, means "whore", and filho da puta (Spanish: hijo de puta) is an offensive word, similar to son of a bitch. In Finnish, katso merta means look at the sea, but to Italophones it sounds very similar to cazzo merda; cazzo is the English equivalent of cock or dick, and merda means shit. While cazzo merda does not make much sense grammatically (they are just two nouns put one after the other), hearing such a thing would be funny for Italians, to say the least. Even more for Spaniards, since the same sentence, katso merta, sounds just like the offensive expression cacho mierda (piece of shit) in Spanish. The Spanish word puse (the first-person past-tense of to put) sounds similar to the English profanity pussy. This is often a source of discomfort for Spanish teachers and humor for Spanish students when the conjugation is being taught. (The previous sentence may also be considered a meta-joke using a pun on the word "conjugation".) The chemistry term gel, which means the same thing in Spanish as in English, sounds like the English "hell" when said by a Spanish speaker. Also the Japanese word mai asa meaning every morning sounds like the English phrase my ass, and is often found humorous for students studying Japanese. "Super white" in Mandarin, chao ji bai, sounds like Teochew "smelly cunt".

In at least one case in Spanish, one word with one connotation in the native language of one of its colonies (in this case, the Philippines) was adopted with another profane connotation in Spanish. The Tagalog word pinga (which means a pole, particularly the one used as a whip to strike or otherwise drive a stray horse into walking on a straight line) is regarded as an equivalent of dick in some Spanish countries, particularly Cuba and Puerto Rico. Yet the word pinga in Portuguese is the slang name for Cachaça, a Brazilian alcoholic beverage.

The American pronunciation of the English word follow is almost identical to the Spanish word falo (penis), although not a profanity.

Canadian French can string a few basic terms from Roman Catholic liturgy into quite impressive strings of invective of up to a minute or more. This is known as sacre. Some of these terms have euphemistic alternatives which are also religious terms, but not Catholic ones.

The German interjection for surprise or admiration Hui! sounds completely like the Russian and Polish swear word equivalent to "cock" (Polish chuj, Russian khuj). The Maori word hui, meaning a meeting or gathering, is very similar in pronunciation.

Hungarian "juh-síp", relating to a shepherd using a whistle to keep the flock together, sounds like English "you sheep". This was used as a gag in the Hungarian cartoon "Gum Family". "Fáklya", Hungarian for "torch", sounds pretty much like English "fuck ya". The British pronunciation of "fast" sounds like Hungarian "faszt", which is the accusative form of "dick" or "cock".

A more exotic example of interlanguage profanity is the English word "Carry" which sounds exactly the same as a Sinhala (Spoken in Sri Lanka) expletive, literally meaning "semen".

Profanity in other languages

Main article: Foreign profanity

For an extensive treatment of profanity (or obscene/vulgar words or topics) in languages other than English, including many lists of examples are either forbidden and taboo in that culture, see Foreign profanity.

For reasons of differing cultural, linguistic and historical backgrounds, the profanities of different languages place emphasis on different subject matter. For more detail, see Foreign profanity. In briefest summary, here is a list showing main differences or emphasis for some common languages:

• English: sex, excrement, homosexuality, incest, increasingly bigotry, racial/ethnic hatred, and prejudice.
• French: sex, excrement, religion, racial/ethnic hatred.
• German: Equating people with animals, (i.e., Schweinehunde), sex, excrement, bigotry/prejudice.
• Norwegian: Predominantly religion/blasphemy in the south, but more genitals and sexual acts with animals further north in the country
• Russian: sex and foul language, but pre-Communist era morality taboos on religion, excrement and disrespect to authority made a comeback after 1991.
• Polish: sex (especially references to penis), excrement, comparing people to pigs and dogs
• Spanish: religion, incest, homosexuality, prostitution.
• Swedish: sex, homosexuality, blasphemy and use of English (i.e., "Fuck you/off")
• Portuguese: sex, homosexuality, prostitution.
• Dutch: diseases, self-damnation and blasphemy.
• Irish: religion (damnation, blasphemy), some sexual terms, and some excrement
• Scots Gaelic: sex, excrement, religion, English-Scottish tensions
• Welsh: sex, excrement, English-Welsh tensions
• Japanese: violations of politeness protocols.
• Korean: Impolite responses to people, esp. family and authority, references to animals, sexual terms
• Chinese: sex, insults to family members, cursing (i.e. Cantonese: "Hum Gah Chan" which literally means "Your Entire Family gets wiped out").
• Italian: blasphemy, some sexual terms, personal insults (i.e. "your mother").
• Arabic: sacrilege/blasphemy, excrement, sex (very defined in, for instance, Saudi Arabia), homosexuality, gender identity, and even saying "Your sister" is considered profane/obscene as it commonly refers to "your sister's vagina". Most of the severely profane words focus on the sexual organs of one's sister, mother, and, in some cases, his wife. "Kos okhtak" is a typical insult, meaning "your sister's vagina". Obscene words including sexual references in Arabic are considered highly severe and are more than frowned upon in most places. Profanity regarding animals or excrement, on the other hand, are considered less severe and more accepted in the Arabic society. Islamically, using such words is prohibited, especially those that refer to another's family.
• Tagalog: sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, incest, political insults.
• Indo-Aryan languages: insults to family members, esp. incest
• Dravidian languages: equating people with animals
• Modern Hebrew: Yiddish loanwords having sexual meaning (Classical Hebrew seems to have had no true profanity, although it had several strong insults)

Books containing famous uses of profanity

• Ulysses by James Joyce
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• Glengarry Glen Ross David Mamet
• various books by Rabelais

Bibliography - sources

• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World [1941]. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
• Template:Harvard reference.
• 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

See also

• List of profanities
• Profanum
• Category:Profanity by language
• Category of English profanity
• Foreign profanity
• Mandarin slang
• Singapore sexual slang terminology
• Latin profanity
• Profanity in ASL
• List of ethnic slurs
• Grotesque body
• penis