Flexibility - in Swearing Terms, Infixing

A fundamental distinction in semantics, or the study of meaning, is that between referential and emotive use. Referential language is essentially factual, formal, and concerned with conveying reality in a precise neutral fashion, whereas emotive language essentially conveys the speaker’s or writer’s feelings. Frequently the difference lies as much in the context as in the words themselves. Thus the statement: “William the Conqueror was a stupid bastard” could be entirely referential, but “Albert Einstein was a stupid bastard” is obviously emotive and judgmental. Emotive use of language thus shows greater latitude in meaning, creating problems of interpretation.

By its nature, swearing consists almost exclusively of emotive language. There are three basic modes: the expletive or exclamation ( damn! ), the curse ( damn you! ), and the intensive (a damn shame! a damn good show! ). Although there is no shortage of referential condemning terms, such as embezzler, pedophile , and plagiarist , great numbers of other words like little, old, bloody, fool, idiot, freak, shit, bastard , and bitch are freely used in an emotive fashion, although all have referential uses. Some, like old , have been used in this fashion since the Middle Ages: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath castigates two of her husbands as “sire oulde lecchour” and as an “olde barelful of lies.” Others, like little , are comparatively recent, being first recorded in Victorian times. Some have quite extraordinary flexibility. The British use of awful is a case in point: “There was an awful accident”; alternatively, “She’s awfully nice,” and so on. In some cases it is not possible to establish the meaning from the term itself: thus the simple exclamation “Shit!” could express annoyance, surprise, pleasure, contempt, boredom, and a range of other feelings. As can be seen, the more common a word, the wider its range of uses, an axiom that G.K. Zipf has corroborated with the alarming statistic that except for a few core words, “different meanings of a word will tend to be equal to the square root of its relative frequency” (1945, 255).

In concert with this greatly extended range of meaning, emotive terms acquire greater grammatical flexibility. Thus, to take a prime example, fuck has extended its grammatical function from being exclusively a verb in late Middle English to virtually every other part of speech. In its most emotive and personal uses the flexibility extends to the incestuous improbability of motherfucker , finally attaining such physical impossibilities as “fuck off!” and “go fuck yourself!” Jonathon Green’s Slang Thesaurus (1999) lists forty-three different forms and idioms. In the past there were, surprisingly, even more forms, such as fuckster, fuckish , and fuckable , which have passed out of use.

The table “Flexibility in Swearing Terms” illustrates the degrees and patterns of flexibil- ity. The various functions are categorized from 1 to 8. In the table the asterisk * denotes usage, while the symbol ° denotes lack of capacity in a particular category. Clearly, only those terms that can be used as both noun and verb are likely candidates in all the modes: the nouns are by definition eligible for only the first two categories. However, it is surprising that only one term, namely bugger , can be used in all modes, and that piss can only be used in one. In United States usage, fuck has almost attained complete flexibility.

Flexibility in Swearing Terms

Categories

1. Personal: “You?!”
2. Personal by reference: “The?!”
3. Destinational: “?off!”
4. Cursing: “?you!”
5. General expletive of anger, annoyance, frustration: “?!”
6. Explicit expletive of anger, annoyance, frustration: “?it!”
7. Capacity for adjectival extension: “?ing” or “?y”
8. Verbal usage: “to?about”

Flexibility in Swearing Terms

Although the table focuses on modern usage, the historical perspective shows that flexibility is not a new feature. Two centuries ago the following range of idioms using the devil or the deuce were common: “What the devil is going on?”; “Who the devil does he think he is?”; " The devil he will!" (rebutting some statement); “She’s taking the devil of a long time!” The entry for devil also shows that devil was used in a wide range of emotive ways in medieval times.

Infixing

This denotes the process by which an intensive term is integrated into a word or phrase, with consequent loss of semantic force. The previous paragraph carried examples using the devil . More typical and topical examples are absobloodylutely, kangabloodyroo , and unfuckingbelievable , where the intensifying term has become part of the whole verbal unit. H.L. Mencken commented on the infixing of goddam in The American Language (1936, 315). The process was generally thought by linguists to be a modern phenomenon, but in fact it has been found as far back as the nineteenth century. Thus the phrase “I was so God damned drunk” is recorded in 1847. According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994), the following quotation from 1865–1867 is “the earliest known example of infixing”: “‘He is, by Jove! A dam incur-dam-able dam coward.’ (When Van Sandt was informed next day of this Feat of profanity he seemed quite gratified.)” The quotation is from De Forest, Miss Ravenel , 272. This degree of flexibility is a clear sign that the word chosen—for example, goddam, bloody , or fuck is sufficiently weakened to be used simply as a rhythmic counter. However, an earlier instance is the medieval infixing of devil as an intensive in the phrase “a twenty develewey” for “a very long way,” discussed under devil.

Flexibility also extends to word creation. Forms like fag-hag, bull-dyke, dumb-ass, stick in the mud , and goofball are original in two senses: although they derive from two recognizable forms, the compounds have unique meanings as insults; furthermore, they do not have referential meanings, as do traditional compounds such as breakfast or cupboard , which can be explained in terms of their roots. All have developed their own idiomatic meanings, which are quite separate from their root meaning.