Rhythm

Rhythm is an important aspect in swearing, as it is of any kind of emotive language, such as expressions of lamentation, anger, or lyrical praise. Very often the rhythm of a formula will dominate the sense to the point that the word choice is not entirely logical. Thus, in the common arrangements the silly old fool!, you fucking bastard!, you blithering idiot!, the complete asshole! , the final nouns carry the weight of the invective, the adjectives silly, old, little, blithering , and complete becoming mere makeweights with virtually no literal sense or semantic force. (In fact, blithering , now a largely meaningless word confined to this formula, is originally derived from blether , meaning “to talk nonsense.”) The structure of the type is significant, since the rhythm of the preceding adjectives, which is of a rising and falling variety, leads up to the major stress on the final noun.

The first example ( the silly old fool! ) demonstrates a common type, namely [ / / / =], where the dash ( – ) signifies a plain stressed syllable, the umlaut (¨) an unstressed syllable, and the equal sign ( = ) a major stress. The type is found, interestingly, centuries ago in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s castigating one of her old husbands as an “olde barrelful of lyes” ( Prologue , l. 302). She also has insults made up of ironic deference and contempt, like “O leeve sire shrewe” (“O dear master rascal”), which follows similar rhythmic pattern [ / / / =] (l. 365). A similar example is “Sire olde lecchour” (l. 242) (“old master lecher”), which has a similar semantic structure but a different rhythmic pattern [-/-¨/=¨], also found in modern types like you fucking bastard! Shakespeare’s extremely articulate hero Hamlet, in one of his hysterical bouts, goes to rhythmic and semantic extremes in castigating the regicide Claudius as “Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!” (II ii 592), finally despatching him with similar polysyllabic invective as: “incestuous, murderous damnèd Dane” (V ii 326).

Such baroque elaboration would not have much impact now. But similar powerful effects can be achieved by juxtaposing a long adjective and a short noun, as in You unconscionable liar!, What an absolute fool! , and the actual description of a notable politician as an unremitting shit . These examples also show a striking contrast in register, playing off a high-register classical term against lower word of common invective. The strongest instances of rhythm overpowering sense lie in the feature known as “infixing,” found in recent forms like absobloodylutely and unfuckingbelievable , discussed in the entry for flexibility.