Don't bother to "Pardon my French"

You call them swear words. Or profanity. Or vulgarity. Or simply “bad words.” Mr. Spock, ever democratic and unemotional in his assessment of human behavior, called them “colorful metaphors.” 

I, however, like to call them “sentence enhancers.”

Briefly:  Both my parents were from blue-collar immigrant backgrounds. Rough lives spent in the military, working in coal mines and oil refineries, coupled with--in some cases--lack of education or English skills--made my grandparents and my great-grandparents expert users of these often-effective words.  My parents, both white-collar and college-educated, still remained close to their roots during my early childhood, using fluently (though, in my mother’s case, a bit ashamedly) the strong words they’d heard from their roughneck fathers and grandfathers. We children, of course, got our mouths washed out with soap for using such words. Which obviously made the words all the more tempting and delicious and ourselves all the more sneaky about their use.

If you're feeling brave, read on:

First, some WordNerdy clarification.  “Profanity” usually refers to irreverence about sacred words, items, or symbols.  For example, French-Canadian profanity consists, in part, of the French words for chalice and host, owing to the influence of the Catholic church on that province’s population. I personally find that the words that shock and offend the devout definitely lose in translation by non-Catholic and non-French people. In French, “Sacré”  (sacred) anything was / is profane, so the use of sacrebleu in all those Disney movies is done out of either blatant disregard or complete ignorance. Words making references to the lake of fire and brimstone, or the words condemning a person to such a place, are profanity, though many people are more comfortable with their use than with the more vulgar references to biological phenomena.

Is saying “Oh my God” profane?  Depends upon whether you believe God to be the Creator’s actual name or merely a title.

The invective that refers to body functions and parts, then, is better classed as “vulgarity.” You know the ones I mean, and that includes, as Jean Shepherd put it, “the Queen Mother of Dirty Words: the Eff Dash Dash Dash Word.” As Vikings dominated England for nearly three centuries, some of them sticking around to coexist with the later-dominant Anglo-Saxon tribes, the North Sea Germanic (Scandinavian) fukka and its several derivatives, all of which simply mean to copulate, may be where the modern word originated. As the Anglo-Saxons were also a Germanic tribe, their ancient word to denote copulation, fick, is another possible ancestor. That F - - -  is an acronym for Found in Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is merely an internet rumor by someone wishing very hard to undirty the word by making it a designation on 12th-century legal documents for cohabitating couples.

And the Queen Mother’s naughty relative, the Ess Dash Dash Dash word, comes from (surprise!) any one of several very old Germanic versions of scite, which originally meant to shed or to separate. We've been euphemizing body functions for centuries. Internet rumors of its beginnings as an acronym are exactly that as well. Crude words for most other body functions / parts can also be traced to Anglo-Saxon, pre-Norman England, though some of those words had cognates in Latin and even Greek.

So, absolutely none of our English / American swears / vulgarities come from the French. The expression “Pardon my French” instead has its cultural origin in the centuries-old animosity between the French and English. For example, if you used an expression like faux pas in 19th-century England, you would immediately excuse yourself for having done so, either for having used a French phrase or for the fact that not everybody may have understood what you meant.

In fact, the bodily function words were of the common vocabulary among the English populace prior to 1066 CE. It was mainly after the Norman invasion and French vocabulary was imposed that the conquered people’s words for body functions came to be considered vulgar. Words that were perfectly acceptable in the tenth century were considered low and vulgar after a few decades of French rule. The rise of Classicism, the persistence of Latin in church, and the mad obstinacy of scholars who imposed Latinate syntax and grammar rules on a language with Germanic roots may be culprits as well. Notice that the Italic-originated words copulate, defecate, and excrement have no stigma attached to their use in common speech whatsoever, aside from their inappropriateness in certain social contexts. Had history been different, those words might have ended up being the unacceptable ones.

One of the more notable attempts to “legitimize” the Eff word by Latinizing it (going so far as to give it a properly-inflected ending!) has been discovered in a scurrilous 15th-century poem by an unknown author obviously writing with tongue firmly in cheek. It didn’t work, but it certainly pointed out the hypocrisy of certain people who believe they can decide which words are “acceptable” and which ones aren’t. Norman Mailer, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Ernest Hemingway are among the writers who encountered censorship in the 20th century. Mailer was asked to substitute the word “fug” for the stronger Anglo-Saxon version.  Sounds like baby-talk.  Not very realistic either.

The upshot is, due to my word nerdiness and history-geekiness, I am more amused by the use of such words than offended by them. Of course I am concerned with cultural and social contexts, as I would be with any word usage. But I admit my greater concern to be that lack of judicious use will cause these sentence enhancers to pack less of a punch, just as with any other word if misused, abused, and overused in writing and speaking.

So put away the bar of soap. Censor yourself around Grandma if you must. Otherwise, you are hereby absolved of the guilt and shame of using colorful metaphors.