A Cacophony of Cussing

Abusive and cuss words are a part of lifestyle now.

- Santosh Pattanaik

Stop for a while on a street corner or betel shop or railway station or bus stop and keep your ears open; you are bound to hear banter amongst friends, some irate person complaining about his boss, conversations about the state of the nation, discussions about home and office politics, and numerous other such things. For most part, these differing voices might have nothing in common save one thing peppering these conversations with the choicest of abuses. The abuses will detail various parts of the human anatomy, and refer to acts of reproduction in a rather crude manner.

Today, we are exposed to more swearing than ever in history. Society is becoming more open and freer with language like we're freer with a lot of other things. Language evolves and taboos weaken. But it is not right to say that swearing has entirely lost its power. Even though we are in quite a comfortable place with swearing and certain fourletter words, we're never quite sure how a swear word is going to land, so it's still a risk to pop one into a conversation. It's that unpredictability that helps to keep swearing current.

In the English Middle Ages, there was little taboo around bodily functions or sex, so some of the words we find most offensive now, would not have been considered so then. Things started to change in the 14th century. Combined with the rise of Protestantism, and with it a strain of Puritanism, this civilising process slowly transformed innocuous words into what modern observers would recognise as obscenities.