Disguise Mechanisms

Since swearing and foul language are by definition “improper,” it is necessary in polite discourse to use various disguise mechanisms to avoid giving offense. These have a long and continuous place in the history of the language, since they provide a useful method of alluding to but not articulating taboo or embarrassing topics. The most common of these are euphemisms, dysphemisms, and various distortions or coded forms of the offending word.

Historically, disguise mechanisms are evident from the beginnings of the language. Thus the phrase “to sleep with” was used as a euphemism for sexual intercourse (itself something of a euphemism) in an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Bible by Ælfric (ca. 1000). Some mechanisms are quite explicit, like “the eff word” or effing , others less so, like a “four-letter word,” since the speaker does not have to be explicit, allowing a choice to the listener. The use of bleep , derived from the censorship of radio material, is recorded in American reference works from 1966, and has subsequently expanded to be a euphemistic adjective or verb from 1971; for example: “J.F.K. spent so much time bleeping in the bedrooms of the White House” ( Los Angeles Times Book Review , March 12, 1978). Some forms are intentionally opaque, like assault , which may mean “rape,” “a violent attack,” or “a beating.” The name of God is the prime example of distortions and truncations being used for disguising purposes.

Foreign languages provide a source for disguise mechanisms, since taboos are not usually perceived or felt in other tongues. Some of these are of surprising duration. Two of the most common in medieval times were pardee (for par dieu , “by God”) and Benedicitee! (“The Lord Bless you”). One of the earliest recorded allusions to fuck occurs in the pseudo-Latin form fuccant in a satirical poem composed in Latin and English some time before 1500, alluding to the extra-mural activities of some Carmelite priests in Cambridge. However, in the actual text the word is not used, appearing in the disguised code-form gxddbov , in which each letter stands for the previous in the alphabetical sequence of the time, i.e. g = f, x = u, d = c and so on. In Elizabethan times, when fuck was highly taboo, the French term foutra was brought into play. Although it has been obsolete for a long time, it has generated cognate, but not obviously related forms, such as footering and footling and the exclamation my foot! This example shows a common feature of the evolution of swearing terms, and language in general, namely that origins become less recognizable with time. The entry for Shakespeare discusses a great range of disguise terms used for bawdy subjects.

The famous diarist Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) provides an unusual and revealing instance of a deliberate use of a foreign language as a personal disguise mechanism. When describing adulterous encounters Pepys resorts to slightly unstandard French. Thus on December 20, 1664: “After dinner [lunch] … alone avec elle je tentoy à faire ce que je voudrais, et contre sa force je le faisoy, bien que pas à mon contentment [and then alone with her I tried to do what I desired, and had my way with her despite her resistance, to my great pleasure].” A similar entry occurs on April 13, 1668: “She and I drank and yo did tocar her corps all over….” Since Pepys wrote his diary in a coded shorthand, his secret would probably have been safe, but he preferred to use a double disguise. A psychological interpretation suggests that he preferred to describe his unchivalrous deeds in terms that were less direct and embarrassing.

Whole lexical systems operate on the basis of the disguise motive, the most notable being Cockney rhyming slang. This scheme refers to taboo subjects by using witty and ingenious coded formulas in which the last term rhymes with the intended word. Thus Bristol City refers to titty and Khyber Pass to arse . However, in speech only bristols and khyber are used. Earlier examples of coded lexical systems are cant, originally the slang language of the Elizabethan underworld. Another form is back slang, whereby words are reversed, such as tenuc for cunt and yob for boy . These systems have grown up spontaneously in particular speech communities. The noted Welsh poet Dylan Thomas played a sly joke on the B.B.C. in his famous radio play Under Milk Wood , broadcast posthumously in 1954, by naming the quintessentially Welsh village of the piece Llareggub, which indeed sounds very Welsh, but takes on a different meaning when it is read backward.

A modern but artificial development is the language of Political Correctness. Formulas like physically challenged serve as euphemistic disguises for disabled or crippled , but are not part of natural language. Various American speech communities use coded references: thus the terms for blacks include schwartze (Yiddish), Blaue (German), and melanza (Italian for “egg-plant”). More general manifestations are HN in American parlance for “house nigger,” Af for African and K for Kaffir in South African slang. The latter two have been recently joined by affirmative , an ironic derivation from the post-apartheid policy of affirmative action .

As these various modes and examples show, the notion of “disguise” varies greatly: in some cases the disguise is obvious; in others the motivation and the logic behind the generation of the form are lost in the past.