Rhyme

Swearing and vituperation, being powerfully emotive modes of expression, employ various poetic devices of emphasis, including alliteration, rhythm, and rhyme. Historically, alliteration was the older mode, being the staple metrical device in Anglo-Saxon poetry, but from the Middle English period (ca. 1150–1500) onward rhyme became the dominant poetic mode. Rhyme can be used in two ways, most commonly as a disguise mechanism creating a euphemistic allusion, such as ruddy for bloody , or teed off for peed off . This mode can be developed into forms such as cunning stunts or the Australian phrase no wucking furries , involving a witty transposition of the initial consonants, technically called a Spoonerism. The rhyming device has been expanded into the ingenious and surprisingly comprehensive code language of rhyming slang, which has its own entry, producing such forms as cobbler’s awls for balls . The other mode is internal rhyme, found in formulas such as hell’s bells!, fuck a duck! and imperfect or partial rhymes such as shit a brick!, stone the crows! , and reds under the bed . Some of these are of surprising duration: duck-fucker is listed in Francis Grose’s slang dictionary (1785) for “the man who has care of the poultry on board a ship of war.” The generation of new “reduplicating” forms as they are called seems to be accelerating, with gang-bang dating from the 1940s, fag-hag from the late 1960s, and dozens more arriving on an annual basis. Assonance is also effective in formulations like yellow peril (incidentally dating from ca. 1900) and gay plague .