Why are some words bad words?

Lin 211 • Section 2, Part 4

Kevin B McGowan

kbmcgowan@uky.edu

2026-09-28

What makes a word a swear word?

Dunny

• Probably related to the word dun meaning brown (e.g. a dun horse for a light brown, usually wild horse)
• In Australia and New Zealand, dunny originally referred to an outhouse, broadened
• The polite term in Australia/NZ for referring to the room for defecating and urinating is ‘the toilet’
• The Heeler family have a power negotiation when mum (Chilli) voices her dispreference for dunny

Lousy

Ling Link

• Think about your own experiences with language, did your family have any words you just weren’t supposed to say (like dunny or lousy)? How would you know?
• It can be pretty hard to know if something that was considered unsayable in your family is similarly bad for everyone.
• Where does the authority to use/not use “bad” words come from in your family?
• Discuss with the people near you for the next few minutes.

Bringing some threads together today

• Arbitrariness: Language is deeply arbitrary and always changing
• Prescriptivism: attempts to dictate what counts as “good” or “acceptable” language usage; almost always lacks the power to actually do so!
• Euphemism: we avoid saying specific naughty/taboo words by replacing them with words that still point at the same concept. Like we’re avoiding magic words.
• Slang: has a powerful in-group/out-group social function and helps the lexicon grow and change with time: innovative, fast moving

Offensiveness is culture-specific

arse, bastard, prick, bollocks, git are pretty bad in the UK & Ireland. Second language learners are cautioned to avoid them in mixed company. “damn, crap, bloody (very British), bugger, pissed off.” are described as ‘mild’. ‘Pissed’ meaning drunk doesn’t even seem to be considered an expletive.

Offensiveness is sense-specific!

Offensiveness is all about connotations

Swear words are swear words because of their emotional and social meanings, not really their denotations or literal meanings.

What kinds of meanings become swear words?

• blasphemy and religious oaths
• bodily waste elimination (words for defecation, urination, but rarely (ever?) menstruation)
• sex and sex organs
  • incest and illegitimate parentage
• perceived lack of intelligence or kindness
• femaleness (alas)

If (potentially) offensive, why do it?

• Swearing, curse words, obscenities, vulgarities, cuss words, swear words, taboo words, potty words, expletives, profanity, foul mouth, we have many euphemisms for this behavior
• Swearing appears to be universal; all cultures have names for ideas, activities, deities, etc. that members of the culture are not meant to say
• So why do we do it? And, maybe just as interestingly, why do we sometimes not do it?

Swearing is…

• Swearing is the use of words that are deemed taboo to express the emotional state of the speaker
  • Swearing is connotative meaning (both emotional and social connotations)
  • Swearing is about license and politeness
    • Swearing can serve a group cohesion function
  • Swearing is about perception (what it means to hearers)

Swearing can be socially-useful

• Swearing isn’t always rude
• It can be fun, funny, cathartic
• Swearing, like slang, can be used to indicate group membership or to show group cohesion
• Swearing can communicate to your interlocutor(s) that you see them as an equal–someone trustworthy
  • But seeing someone as an equal can also be rude (parents when you’re little, interviewer, people you don’t know)

Swearing has pain-relieving properties!

• Swearing has well-documented hypoalgesic properties! (Hay et al. 2024)
• (at least if your hand is freezing in a lab)
• “Collectively, these well-powered studies consistently show that swearing effectively modulates acute pain … This suggests that the hypoalgesic effects of swearing are a reliable finding”

A real, published figure

• We don’t yet understand why/how swearing increases pain tolerance
• Clearly, swearing can be powerfully emotional for the talker
• But it can also be powerfully emotional for the listener…

Swearing can be offensive

• Even when a specific word + sense is considered a “bad” word by a culture, people still say it
• How do they know when/why that is less acceptable?
• Swearing can be offensive when it violates one or both of:
  • Authority: Some (parent, guardian, teacher, employer, religious text) dictates that certain words are forbidden.
  • Politeness: There are words we only really say if we are thoughtless or if our intention is to be hurtful, hateful, or mean.

Swearing is mostly legal in the US (2026)

Map of where it is illegal to swear in the US

Legal limits on swearing

• Courts have consistently found that swearing is protected by the First Amendment except:
• Threats against a person or property
• Harassment or repeated, targeted abuse
• Disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace
• “Fighting words” likely to provoke immediate violence
• Swearing, along with slurs and other potential hate speech, can be interpreted as evidence of hate speech

So what are the social limits on swearing?

• One place we avoid swearing is when we don’t know everyone in the room, why?
• In part because swearing, like slang, serves a social function
• Being comfortable swearing among people can mean that you are equals, that you trust each other, that you are comfortable violating norms together
• Swearing among people you don’t know rudely assumes that you have their consent to violate norms

How does a word get to be rude in the first place?

• Like all words: history, morphological processes, and usage!
• What word do you think this is?
  • Old English scitan , from Proto-Germanic *skit- (source also of North Frisian skitj , Dutch schijten , German scheissen ), from Proto-Indo-European root * skei - “to cut, split”, extension of root * sek “to cut”
  • The idea is about separation from the body
  • And it’s related to science , omniscient , _ _ and conscience !

Comparative Reconstruction

• Comparative reconstruction is a method used in historical linguistics to uncover vocabulary and structures of an ancestor language by drawing inferences from the evidence remaining in several daughter languages
  • Often dealing with the sounds of a language
• So, with the previous example:
  • * skei - > *skit- = vowel change, addition of [t] (though see * sek - )
  • *skit- > scitan _ _ = maybe not a change for k > c (?), addition of verbal suffix
  • scitan _ _ > shit = [sk] > [ʃ], loss of inflexion

Doing stuff with language

• Language is the principal means we have to “do stuff”
  • To greet, compliment, and insult one another,
  • To plead or flirt,
  • To seek and supply information, and
  • To accomplish hundreds of other daily tasks
• Actions that are carried out through language are called speech acts
  • Such as lying, promising, greeting,
  • And euphemism, slang, and swearing!

What’s next?

• Come on Wednesday for “Who says ‘pop’ and why?”
• Read Pullum chapter 4
• Quiz 5 Friday!

Reference for Historical Reconstruction Slide

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=shit

References

Hay, Carlie M., Jackson L. Sills, Julia M. Shoemake, Christopher G. Ballmann, Richard Stephens, and Nicholas B. Washmuth. 2024. “F@#$ Pain! A Mini-Review of the Hypoalgesic Effects of Swearing.” Frontiers in Psychology 15 (June): 1416041. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1416041.