Fashion in Swearing
Generally speaking, the history of swearing shows distinct shifts in mode and in content. These essentially trace a decline from invocation to the gods or some higher force, to various secular modes, such as excretory, copulatory, and racial swearing, the dominant forms of modern times. Fashion implies a self-conscious or collective consciousness in the adoption of certain styles, which Jonathan Swift noted in his Polite Conversation (1737), quoting “an ancient poet”: For, now-a-days, men change their oaths
As often as they change their cloaths.
(1963, 30)
Though clothes, apparel and accessories, are the most obvious components of fashion, the notion is also apparent in language, especially in slang.
There is clear evidence from the Renaissance onward of writers being aware of the phenomenon and regarding fashion as an aspect of swearing. One of the first pieces of explicit evidence comes from Queen Elizabeth’s godson, Sir John Harrington, in his Epigrams (1615), commenting on the debasement of religious swearing:
In elder times an ancient custom was,
To sweare in weighty matters by the Masse.
But when the Masse went down (as old men note)
They sware then by the Crosse of this same grote [value].
And when the Crosse was likewise held in scorne,
Then by their faith, the common oath was sworne.
Last, having sworne away all faith and troth,
Only God damn them is their common oath.
Thus custome kept decorum by gradation,
That losing Masse, Crosse, Faith, they find damnation.
Ostensibly offering a witty comment on changing styles in religious oaths, Harrington is making a profound observation on the change of religion in England from Catholicism (symbolized in the Mass) to Protestantism. He is commenting on fashion as superficial (in the reference to decorum ), but also on debasement, since gradation really means "degradation"—that is, going down in steps or stages.
Modes of swearing are often alluded to in Restoration comedy (from 1660 to ca. 1700), characterized as generally bawdy and decadent. That entry discusses a remarkably explicit example from Love in a Bottle (1698), by George Farquhar, where the pronunciation of zounds (with its horrific origin in “God’s wounds” in the crucifixion) is trivialized and treated simply as a matter of fashion. Decades later, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s highly popular play The Rivals (1775) contains the casual comment “Ay ay, the best terms will grow obsolete. Damns have had their day” (II i). This was not so, historically speaking, as the entry for damn shows, but for the high society of the time the word was passé.
As with all matters of fashion, the problem is defining who are the leaders and what is in fashion. In Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599) Henry says to his bride-to-be: “Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined to the weak list of a country’s fashion: we are the makers of manners, Kate” (V ii 292-93). Today the leaders of fashion are more “celebrities” and entertainers. Context is always vital. As the entries for Pygmalion and Kenneth Tynan show, a swearword may be common, but a publicized use of it can still provoke outrage.
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