Instability of Swearing Terms

Swearing demonstrates with most force the semantic fact that words do not have stable or fixed meanings, either historically or even within the same basic speech community. To some extent swearing is a special case, since the language is consistently emotive rather than referential, leading to the characteristics discussed in the entry for flexibility. Thus the term shit has a whole range of expletive meanings and tones, expressing anger, surprise, frustration, even pleasure, whereas the notional synonyms excrement and feces are simply factual and limited in tone, thus having no swearing potential. This example demonstrates another general truth that native Anglo-Saxon terms have greater emotive potential, and classical terms correspondingly less. However, not all of the “four-letter” words are actually of Anglo-Saxon origin. Furthermore, meanings of basic swearwords vary according to speech community. Thus bastard has very different senses in American, Australian, and British English, as does motherfucker even in America. Fanny remains a source of transatlantic anatomical confusion, meaning “vagina” in British English but “the buttocks” in American English. As can be seen below, tail had a similarly confusing range of meanings in medieval times.

The historical dimension illuminates the proposition of instability still more dramatically. Thus if one reduces and simplifies the basic meanings of a number of key terms as they have evolved, the results show extraordinary semantic changes.

bugger (noun)

1. heretic 1340
2. sodomite 1555 >
3. practicer of bestiality 1555 >
4. chap, fellow 1719 >

punk

1. whore 1575
2. catamite 1904 >
3. worthless person 1917 >

tramp

1. male vagrant 1664 >
2. sexually promiscuous woman 1922 >

shrew

1. small aggressive mole-like animal 800 >
2. rascal 1250
3. belligerent spiteful woman 1400 >

harlot

1. rogue, vagabond 1225
2. prostitute 1432 >

frig

1. to masturbate 1598 >
2. to copulate 1707 >
3. to fiddle 1785 >

minx

1. pet dog 1542
2. pert girl, hussy 1592 >
3. whore 1594
4. scheming, cunning woman 1812 >

pimp

1. pander, procurer 1607 >
2. minister to evil 1704 >
3. informer (Australian) 1885 >
4. Peeping Tom (Welsh) 1940 >

prat (UK)

1. buttocks 1598
2. female genitals 1800s
3. fool, idiot 1968 >

roger

1. penis 1653
2. to copulate 1709 >
3. to rape (U.S.) 1930s

wench

1. child of either sex (OE wencel )
2. girl, maid, female child 1330s >
3. mistress, lover 1380s >
4. wanton woman, 1550s >
5. young woman of lower class 1850s >

faggot

1. shrewish woman 1591 >
2. naughty child 1873 >
3. male homosexual 1914 >

tail

1. backside 1303 >
2. “female pudendum,” 1362
3. penis 1386

This list is selective, not comprehensive, and thus does not include the most potent “four-letter” words, which have their own entries. Nor does it contain words like bitch and cow , which are metaphorical extensions of animal terms. Some of these, like sow and dragon , have quite complex histories. But it clearly shows remarkable shifts of meaning. As can be seen, many of these terms have changed gender as well as reference: harlot, shrew, tramp , and wench have all become feminized, while prat, faggot , and punk have become male terms. Those that come to refer to a woman almost invariably deteriorate to mean one who is sexually promiscuous, while terms that refer to males, like bugger, punk , and prat , tend to become less condemning. Several, such as harlot, shrew , and wench , have become either obsolete or obsolescent. Others, like bugger, frig , and tail , have left their sexual senses behind and become used very commonly, although bugger has limited usage in the United States, and tail survives in the chauvinist expression “a piece of tail.” Some, like punk, faggot , and tramp , have become more commonly used and more critical in American English. Tail is an interesting example since the evidence shows that in the fourteenth century it had three quite different meanings running concurrently. There was also a verbal sense, “to copulate.” Furthermore, the sexual senses are found in all the major authors from Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland in the fourteenth century through to Alexander Pope in the eighteenth, admittedly in “naughty” or risqué contexts.

There are various explanations for this instability. The most plausible is that the terms deal with aspects of life of which many speakers are ignorant or prefer to avoid. A remark- able instance is the term merkin , which few modern readers will recognize. No doubt because of this rarity and its predominantly underground usage, the word has had the following senses: “the female pudendum ” (1535), followed by “counterfeit hair for the privities of women” or a pubic wig (1620), succeeded by “an artificial vagina” found in Richard Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments (1886, X, 239) and “hair dye” in American thieves’ slang. Because of the physical proximity of the items, it is not always possible to determine the exact sense. Many terms of ethnic abuse show a great range of applications. Thus frog has been applied to the Dutch and the Jesuits as well as to the French, while gook and wog have still wider range of insulting targets.