Jess Zafaris

for those actions or those body parts in Old English.

So, you know, some of them were more vulgar than others.

The F word has always been pretty vulgar because of the action it describes.

But the S-H word for defecation was simply the word for that action.

In Old English, it was spelled S-C-

I-T-A-N.

And the other words that are more polite that we use for that term, those that are multi-syllabic at least, like defecation, like feces, those words are Latin and French derived.

And it's because this prestige class that spoke French termed those more polite because of the power dynamics between Germanic language speakers and Romance language speakers.

You know, that's an interesting point.

And in many contexts, they're almost casual or used for emphasis.

In online spaces, it tends to be perfectly acceptable to swear and to include vulgar language, whereas saying it out loud, perhaps because of the consonants of them or the plosives involved, perhaps they sound more emphatic maybe when you say them aloud.

And I think it's also their association with anger and taboo topics and things we don't speak about in polite conversation that have perhaps made them alarming when brought up in otherwise normal conversation.

I agree.

I think it has to do with the relaxation, in part at least, with the relaxation of obscenity and profanity laws.

There used to be a lot more control around the kinds of language you could include in popularly available literature.

In fact, you know, George Carlin's seven words you can't say on TV, half of those are words that we barely consider to be that vulgar anymore.

Some of them, of course, still are, but I think there are others that others would consider more serious.

Also, the MPAA has relaxed its ratings around what can be said on television over time.

I want to say that it was a big deal, and I'm not going to be able to call up the exact date, but it was a big deal when PG-13 movies could include, say, two instances of the F-word.

I agree, and I think it's because we have the ability to connect with so many people nowadays that you can run into any type of language.