How Much did English Speakers Swear in the Past?

• The 1880s Speak: Recen... - The (absolutely fascinating) Patrick Feaster video

[@eddietemple2302]

"How To Get Demonetised In 23 Seconds"

[@classicshit2]

Total worth it!!! 👍

[@loztagain8278]

I read this at about 10 seconds.

[@charlesfu3726]

He still won.

[@kiddankula5480]

Fukin' hel mate

[@herobrineslayer1585]

I just realized that brits use the letter s rather than z in spelling

[@Schizopantheist]

If only we could have recorded people throughout history stubbing their toes

[@charlytaylor1748]

god has them all stored in a filing cupboard, gets them out for a laugh now and then

[@katherinetutschek4757]

Hahahaha

[@dontblockthebox]

I just wanna hit shit

[@MagisterIohannes]

This reads like a Lindybeige outro text xD

[@gregortheoverlander4122]

for real tho... there is so much about every day people that I wish we knew. All we know about are the rich and powerful. I so wish that we had more works on things like jokes told by the average family man.

[@BobHutton]

I went to school, in Australia, in the 1960's. My recollection is that we swore a lot, but not in front of adults. I also got the impression adults swore a lot, but not in front of children.

[@benjaminharrisonofficial]

I went to school in Australia in the 2000s and my recollections are much the same. Actually I remember swearing much more when I was in year four (say, about nine years old) than I might even now that I'm in my twenties, though only ever around others of my age.

[@nicosmind3]

@@irenejennings7810 The C word is a term of enderment in the UK too

[@alexanderfroebelzehl3825]

Beautiful

[@TheAmberHarrison]

@@irenejennings7810 they even swear on the radio here in Australia, though in the UK they don't. Swearing seems not to hold as much weight here is Aus as it does in the UK (having lived in both countries I noticed that)

[@jackeldridge1319]

@@irenejennings7810 I'd say this owes to the fact that NZ is dramatically more religious, and has far more history with free settlers compared to Australia's convict past. Like I grew up in Tasmania and I don't think I even saw a cross until I was like 8 or 9 years old. Every NZer I have ever met has a cross in their living room regardless of who they are or their background. Christianity is kinda niche here or at the very least not very stringently believed in by identifying christians tbh

[@Kellzboi97]

How did he manage to say ‘I’m not your brother shithouses, if you come down here I’ll knock your bleeding heads off’ so casually and seriously, without laughing. That was brilliant😂

[@whiterabbit3618]

It’s 4:30am, I’m alone and I just laughed out loud when he quoted that. So deadpan 🤣

[@skanthavelu]

I'm dead!!! 😂😂

[@SnabbKassa]

Well it does sound like a line from totally real British TV show "Jack of the Dump", which is covered by the channel Lipmouth Studios

[@gayvideos3808]

Hearing this man swear makes him seem slightly more human

[@solesearching1405]

"slightly"

[@imnotapollo4188]

He has some older videos where he swore a lot.

[@amfoy5919]

I can confirm that he is definitely not human.

[@michaelearendil6843]

He's just massively intelligent, which makes him a very fine human indeed.

[@robertreitze3192]

@@michaelearendil6843 Does higher intelligence correlate with less swearing in your opinion? I beg to differ.

[@TheMangoDeluxe]

I remember a teacher told me off for saying 'bugger'. Looked her square in the eye and said, 'bugger isn't a swear word - my dad says it all the time.' Flawless logic by 9 year old me.

[@plottwist1733]

My teachers used to tell me off for saying "bloody hell" and "naff all".

[@yeboi5478]

My teacher told me off for saying knackered

[@jacobarmour6325]

@@yeboi5478 yh I never even knew this word had rude connotations until very recently

[@vampmode9132]

@@jacobarmour6325 and frigging means giving the fanny a poke I didn't know that until recently

[@littlegrain2414]

@Holden Mcgroine wait really, is his christian?

[@Allottedaaron]

In the first part of your video you included an example where an actress exclaims fuck several times as a response to forgetting her lines. Keep in mind that this convention (particularly in America) developed amongst actors as a way to force a cut. Many programs had very tight budgets and a director would often be tempted to let a mistake go through to broadcast as re-filming a film or section was costly. An actor had very little control over this, however if they said words which could not be broadcast (such as the word "fuck") then they could force the director to call cut and redo the scene. Actors therefore often swore if they were unhappy with the scene, to go back and do this again. It doesn't mean that the actor is necessarily habitually using expletives, as their goal is to force a cut. This technique is used in filing today in everything from children's productions to prime time TV shows like "Bake Off".

[@simonroper9218]

I had absolutely no idea about this, thank you! That's fascinating :)

[@whatgoesaroundcomesaround920]

This is really interesting, a sort of utility version of swearing!

[@user-mm3sd3uh6y]

@@simonroper9218 funny thing is that "с-U-nt'' and " can't '' sound the same in british english, are you british people joking on that?) like for example, I CAN"T! no , you're a Dicc)))

[@cyrusposting]

​@@whatgoesaroundcomesaround920 Similarly I have seen instances of people playing copywritten music on their phones when they dont want to be filmed.

[@abraxasjinx5207]

​@@cyruspostingUS police do this routinely. They play Brittney Spears loudly while beating a civilian.

[@CC-hx5fz]

My Nan (b.1902) used to swear a fair bit. She was quite respectable, a chapel going teacher. She only swore in English and told me that there were no swear words in Welsh. She would use words like bloody, bloody hell, bugger and sod but she also expected us to learn some sense of self control and know when to swear and when not too. Some swearing is insulting but generally, wherever I've lived in the UK, swearing increases when you are among friends.

[@dabblepants]

I can corroborate - my Dad is a native Welsh speaker (though born later in 1944) and he has always said that Welsh-speaking people might make some religious or blasphemous exclamations in "swearing" situations, but that it was nothing like in English.

[@ThatBoyWithaGuitar]

In the dutch language the act of breeding animals is called fokken. The person who breeds the animals is called a fokker.

[@EatRawGarlic]

Allegedly, former minister of foreign affairs Joseph Luns even told president Kennedy: "I fok horses!"

[@daveharrison84]

Did this traditional occupation ever become a surname?

[@Seyfudin]

@@daveharrison84 yes, among others a famous aircraft designer from WWI

[@Jamster_070]

In Afrikaans fok is the equivalent to fuck

[@democracydignityhumanrights]

JJ van Dyk that might say something about the Dutch who colonized South Africa...

[@abbashaidari8313]

I've never would've imagined a historical analysis of swear words would be so interesting..

[@lesnyk255]

My sister in law used to be speech pathologist. She noted that many stroke victims who lose the ability to speak can still swear fluently - a different part of the brain is involved.

[@abbashaidari8313]

@@lesnyk255 that's super interesting..

[@FoulkeVlogs]

It’s cause he’s British

[@Mephilis78]

Yep people have this kind of attitude that makes them act like swear words are insignificant

[@talmoskowitz5221]

Find a copy of "Shakespeare's Bawdy." It's an entire book analyzing swearing in Shakespeare.

[@cajunpipesmoker1519]

I’m from the South in the USA and I am impressed with your knowledge of the south. I was born in ‘65. In our home we didn’t cuss (swear). But, when I was young, men did not cuss around “ladies” ( good, virtuous, married women/girls). If they did cuss they would apologize to the lady, child, and husband. If a man cussed in front of a lady or child, you could expect a man (usually husband/father) to correct/confront the cusser!! Some of us still react unfavorably to people who cuss in front of children and wives. In my family we couldn’t use God’s name... but we could use substitute phrases, such as, Gosh Dog It! Or... Dog Gone It!!! Other replacement phrases that were acceptable: son of a gun, son of a biscuit eater, aw foot. In the South old timers would say, John Brown to replace damnit or shit... my dads phrase was “I’ll be John Brown!” (FYI... John Brown was a famous abolitionist prior to the beginning of the American Civil War. The South used his name as a swear word for decades!!!!!).

[@TomorrowWeLive]

In New Zealand, and undoubtedly all Anglophone countries, swearing in public, especially in front of a woman, was a criminal offence. This I cluded blasphemy. A few years ago I met a man who would have been in his seventies, who was a policeman since his twenties, who said he arrested people for taking God's name in vain (and the first time he found out about homosexuality was when they told him about it as a police recruit, since of course it was a crime).

[@Severtx5]

Same experience from the South. I would add that there seems to be a tangible difference in speech privately and publicly for those who have a religious tradition in their family of origin and those who are devout in their faith. Language is one of those areas of life that a growing faith will eventually have influence. Though raised in a Christian family by tradition, I quickly stopped using foul language when I actually became a Christian in college.

[@cajunpipesmoker1519]

@@Severtx5 , excellent point!

[@bourbon2242]

@@TomorrowWeLive hello Oswald Mosley

[@lepolhart3242]

@@TomorrowWeLive I call BS on a policeman arresting people for blasphemy as he would have been seen as a nutter and even his superiors would have told him to calm down. If it`s true then he must have been some religious nutter who wanted to shove his beliefs down people`s throats. I have family in NZ and I`ve heard New Zealanders swear even older generations.

[@michaelharvey2196]

Growing up in the Bible Belt in the 1960s, I never heard swearing in my home and rarely heard it at school. Only the "bad" kids swore. My Dad would say "dad blame it" instead of "God damn it," and "heck" instead of "hell." When I got to college in the early 1970s, the universe of swearing opened up for me.

[@yeehaw3792]

This could be used as evidence that colleges erode culture.

[@alisonbrowning9620]

i was raised strict evangelical, mum still tells people off for saying Jesus Christ or bloody hell. the work place is where i first encountered it and at 18 and very niave I wa sshocked at the swearing and casual sex, it was a big eye opender.

[@lepolhart3242]

@@alisonbrowning9620 What do people say in return when she tells them off. I`m in the UK and evangelicals are seen as nutty. Your mother would get a stronger response if she done it in the UK.

[@JohnMartens]

My dad's side of the family were all Mennonites, or like "Amish lite" where Mennonites were permitted to use some technology but were still straight-laced well behaved Christians. In his youth my great grandfather was a farmhand, and on one occasion his non-Mennonite fellow farmhands had him work on a defective machine in order to try to get him to swear. In his frustration he finally called it a "gall-darn stupid machine" which was the most foul thing he had ever said, and his coworkers were roaring with laughter.

[@yungamurai]

I'm English but have spent some time in rural Manitoba around 2 hours West of Winnipeg (specifically Portage la Prairie and I saw Mennonite people all over the place, including visiting the local Walmart in new trucks. Like Amish Xtreme haha!

[@katherinetutschek4757]

Haha that's so cute❤

[@lesnyk255]

As youngsters (55 yrs ago), the expression "Jeezum Crow" was a common minced oath - survives today hereabouts (northeastern USA) as "jeez", an expression of mild dismay or surprise.

[@fartsofdoom6491]

Sorry, but I can't read this phrase without hearing Butters' voice (from South Park).

[@OxsanaAriadneValentina]

@@fartsofdoom6491 😆😂😂😂

[@jontyhamp01]

In a recent conversation with my 80 year old Mother, we talked about the various degrees of modern swearing. I said that by far the most injurious word was "cunt". She blithely declared that as a child during the 1940's they would say "CU Next Tuesday".

[@Ewan_Tyler]

Surprises me that the phrase was around then, I thought it was more modern

[@ThrowerTimothy]

@@Ewan_Tyler There's a street in Shrewsbury known as Grope Lane. Originally it was C***grope Lane. It's a very old word indeed.

[@christhorpejunction8982]

Timothy Thrower there are Grape/Grope Lanes all over the place. I know of ones also in Hull/Beverley and one in Wakefield.

[@calebcustombricks2631]

CU Next Tuesday was around in the 1940s?

[@Svvithred]

I always say "Tuesday, Wednesday AND Thursday" in reply 😉

[@thunderwazp7653]

I’m fluent in both Swedish and English, the thing is that I almost exclusively swear in English, a friend of mine pointed out that he could count the number of times he’d heard me swear in Swedish during our three years attending a Swedish high school on one hand while I manage to get a curse into almost every f***ing sentence I spoke in English

[@tairneanaich]

These words in particular, what (I actually can‘t remember who said this, was it Julie Andrews?) called „a good four letter anglosaxon word“ or something like that- are SO satisfying! I‘ve not found expletives in other languages I like more for swearing (pizdets is pretty good tho, excuse my transliteration)

[@readventurekids]

Swearing in Cantonese is almost as pleasureable as in English. It just rolls off the tongue and it's filth.

[@tairneanaich]

@@readventurekids love that!

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

@ThunderWazp Is it true that Swedish swearing is based more on religion than anything else? That's what someone told me when I was part of a little project looking into swearing as part of my linguistics course at uni.

[@thunderwazp7653]

@@MatthewMcVeagh I would have to say it is, religious swearing is (in my accent) by far the most common though words equal to English shit, cunt, and cock do appear with the first of these three by far the most common non-religious swear word (in my accent at least). ’Jävlar’ and ‘helvete’ translated as ‘devils’ and ‘hell’ is according to my experience the two most common swear words in Swedish.

[@j0nnyism]

It’s important to remember that words like bloody or bugger were much stronger words for our grandparents than they are for us

[@senorsiro3748]

There’s generally has been a practice that exists among many Americans of making an effort not to swear in front of women (especially unfamiliar ones), children, or your parents, but the implication of restraint being necessary and the existence of so many stand-ins for swear words: “Frick, Fiddlesticks, Fudge, Shoot, Sugar-Honey-Ice-Tea, Son of a Biscuit, etc.” is that swearing was common, probably even socially _expected_ , in other company. For people who practice this can really be night and day though. At high school with the lads, a guy can swear every fifth word, and at home they are psychologically incapable of swearing.

[@nate_d376]

I would add, that in my youth, it was rare to hear swearing in public in general, occasionally a group of youths would mouth off, but nothing like today, where it seems very common and prolific in public, and done without shame. For context, I grew up in the bay area, during the 80s. Now, in certain places, I've noticed in today's climate, like family entertainment places, or where young children are gathered, it's tamped down and considered rude to cuss. But, I suppose that's contextual and depends on the specific culture as well.

[@gareth2736]

My kids don't swear at home and claim they don't swear at school (they are 11 and 13). It surprises me because we have never strongly prohibited swearing unlike my parents...i do wonder if they are just very good at home and swear in other contexts but I don't think I have overheard them swear at each other and emotions definitely run high in our house sometimes, and they have never been given the message they would be in big trouble if they did swear at home. I wondered if it meant swearing was becoming a bit less common.... Interesting at work swearing seems a bit of a status signifier, most people don't swear in a professional context such as a meeting but the most senior managers would....

[@solhewrext5710]

I would think this goes for most British households as well, especially around superiors, be it parents or teachers. However, in privacy, British teens do swear quite a bit

[@colterboethel379]

As an American youth I can confirm this is true

[@brendanfarrow3674]

In the US it kind of follows this equation: Closeness with person x Similarity in age x Formality of setting = Commonality of swearing, And the formality of the setting also directly determines the severity of the swearing.

[@leea8706]

My gran was born in the 30’s, she said my Grandpa used to swear like a sailor around his friends and workmates in shipyards in Scotland, but never swore in front of her. The first time he did was on their wedding day and it was completely by accident.

[@plantagenant]

I kept watching the Dalek next to you wondering if it was going to start yelling "f****** exterminate!"

[@TerryDowne]

Eighty years ago Orwell wrote that the English common people used "probably the foulest language in the world."

[@torytronrud2413]

When I was a child in the 1960s there were some boys who would not complete a thought without swearing and who took pride in the number of expletives they could use in a sentence. Others refused to swear at all. I suspect swearing has been common throughout history though every generation tends to believe theirs is exceptional.

[@annoyed707]

Now it is lazy bastards who mistake 'like' for punctuation.

[@JamLeGull]

annoyed707 every language uses filler sounds such as like

[@williamcooke5627]

As a lower-middle-class Canadian of the same generation, my experience replicated yours. It is also important to note that we almost never swore in the presence of authority figures, our elders, or women of any age: only when we hung out together as boys.

[@williamcooke5627]

There were however exceptions for certain mild swear words. If we were with men and doing some task and some pice of equipment didn't behave as it should, my granddad might exclaim 'hold still, ye bugger' in front of us boys, but not if there were women within earshot.

[@finolaomurchu8217]

@@williamcooke5627 You were brought up properly then. When you hear f this, f that so boring.

[@vowelsounds]

I grew up in south central Louisiana, and typically adults make a point not to swear around children but, with the exception of certain formal settings, don't really care about swearing around other adults. When I was younger, my grandparents and parents would get away with swearing around us children by switching to Cajun French lmao

[@JackWabbitTV]

I've heard of the French community in Louisiana, it's so cool to see someone from it!

[@stumccabe]

vowelsounds . I think this is probably universal. Swear words are meant to be shocking and powerful and only used when the occasion demands. They are not to be used too casually, and hence loose their power, and are certainly not to be used in the presence of children. I was brought up (raised, for Americans) by English parents in Rhodesia, Southern Africa. As kids we would use the "c", "f" and "s" word as commonly as they are used today - I never heard my parents use these words.

[@fredgags]

What kind of swears do Cajun French speakers use? Are they like the québécois swears or are there unique ones to Cajun French?

[@vowelsounds]

@@fredgags I don't really know any Quebecois swear words unfortunately, but as far as Cajun swears, there was la merde (pronounced like ma(r) with an a like in cat) for shit, fils de putain (pronounced like feet pue ta(n)) for son of a prostitute or bitch, tchou? (pronounced like chew) for ass or idiot, and quite a few others. My grandmother was fond of yelling "moudi? du diable" - I don't actually know what the moudi was supposed to mean but the phrase was *definitely* reserved for when she was very angry lol. My grandmother - I called her ma-mere (pronounced mama' with schwa for the first a and the second a short as in cat) - has passed away, but I'll try and get in touch with my mom to see if she knows the moudi bit. I'm sorry for any format awkwardness. I'm typing this on my phone!

[@vowelsounds]

@@fredgags Freddie Gagliolo OK so I asked my mom, and she said that it was something along the lines of "damn the devil" or "damn devil," and I think the word is supposed to be maudit (damned, cursed)! (They certainly didn't teach us swear words in my high school French class! 😂) I spent some time with a French exchange student and her mother, and when she was describing what she thought of Cajun French to some other French people, she said that it sounded like very old French. I guess that makes a bit of sense as le grand derangement began in the 18th century. You can kind of tell too by the way that Cajun French speakers refer to things that were invented later. There's a local car dealership that uses a Cajun French slogan. "On va soigner ton char comme le char au nous autres!" We will treat your car as if it were our own, with char (I guess cart in English?) for car instead of voiture. 🙂🙂

[@kelrogers8480]

My parents were not swearers, and my grandad, who ran a pub in the 1970s in England, did not allow swearing. Anyone who swore got put out.

[@susandrydenhenderson6234]

My cousin ran a pub in North East England around 2005-10 and if anyone swore they’d be warned once and thereafter asked to leave.

[@tatata1543]

Your thoughts on the use of the “c” word in Britain should take into account the way it is used in certain parts of Scotland where it can almost be a used in an affectionate way. It’s quite common amongst young men to refer to a friend as a ‘c’ in a way that is not at all insulting.

[@michaelroche6181]

Likewise in Ireland it can be a term of endearment.

[@aussiejubes]

And in Australia

[@johnnyoldham847]

North West England too

[@OHYS]

I live near London and I had never heard it used until I was about 15. I was really shocked and uncomfortable. Then I went to college and everybody used it all the time

[@tatata1543]

@@OHYS You led a sheltered life.

[@veuzou]

In ancien French (and rarelly and as a mild joke nowadays), the English were often called "les Godons" and I've always heard that it was because the English soldiers during the Hundred Year War used to swear "Goddamn! " all the time.

[@rogeranderson1524]

Here in NZ, there is a bit of folk-etymology that posits that the Maori word "pakeha" resulted from hearing so many white settlers saying " Bugger ya!"

[@wfcoaker1398]

Zachary Richard wrote a song about the ethnic cleansing of the Acadians in the 18 century. It's called Reveille. In it, he refers to the English as "les Goddam". Q

[@otsoko66]

@@wfcoaker1398 I'm from Quebec -- In Mexico, the slang term for Quebecois tourists is 'los tabernacos' after 'tabernac!' (dialect for 'tabernacle'), the most common Quebec swear-word (Quebec swear words tend to be blasphemous rather than sexual: so "c'est fucké" ('it's broken') is not swearing at all.

[@wfcoaker1398]

@@otsoko66 I love Quebecois swearing. Especially "câlice". Lol. The wat they drag out the rounded 'a' on the first syllabel is almost musical. "Caaaalice!" Lol

[@butterflygroundhog]

@@wfcoaker1398 it's true we do tend to elongate those vowels; we also like to put a lot of accent on the R in tabarnak and criss when we angrily employ them

[@spasticpeach]

First time I heard my grandma swear I damn near fell out the chair. I must have been around 18. She just look at me completely dead pan and said "Yes I know these words." 10 years on and I still have yet to recover.

[@gtPacheko]

My southern Italian grandmother swears very little, my northern Italian grandmother swears a shit ton. When I used to live with the northern one, it was "CARALHO, FILHO DA PUTA, MERDA" all day long (We live in Brazil, that's why it's Portuguese). Very funny. Women should swear too, we're all human.

[@Ice.muffin]

@@gtPacheko Oooooh SG fan spotted😸😺

[@davidmiller9485]

funny that. My grandmother never swore in front of any of us until she got to be about 70. I was having coffee with her and she said "that fucking asshole across the street has so many cats that shit all over my yard that i can't fucking walk in it". I just sat their looking stunned. She looked at me and said " i'm 70 now, i can cuss if i want to. I've earned that right". My response was " sounds fair". Her reasoning was solid.

[@Beruthiel45]

@@davidmiller9485 I concur. I'm 75 and have sworn more often in the last few years than I did in all my previous ones. But I did get cancer and chemo and open heart surgery plus a perforated ulcer so that might have had some bearing on my turn of phrases. 😉

[@sal7t5]

"Yes I know these words." hahaha brilliant

[@Gruntelfluk]

I grew up in a working class town in central Scotland in the 60s. I knew adults in my family who never swore at all, with only an occasional 'bloody' or 'bugger' emanating from their mouths. My Dad who had been in the Royal Navy during WW2, really could 'swear like a sailor'' a phrase which Simon mentions. In fact, I heard oaths and swear phrases from my Dad that I never heard anywhere else. I remember it being frowned upon then if ladies swore in company, especially in front of mixed company. Another taboo I recall from then was that to swear while on a phone call just wasn't right!

[@dr.arikgreenberg25]

Great video, as always. Let me share my own experience growing up in New York in the 1970s and '80s. Swearing was certainly heard, but it incorporated a lot more words than merely the big three you mentioned, and the presence of these tended to mitigate the harshness of the big ones. For instance, my grandfather and great aunt were likely the ones with the most colorful language in the family (born in the early 1900s to 1910s). However, during their most free and colorful speech, telling bawdy stories, they used a lot of "son of a bitch", "bastard", "Goddamnit", and the occasional "sh*t" (I'm too much of a gentleman to spell it out here). It was extremely rare to hear them using the word "f*ck", as it was considered to be even too rude for them to use, except in the most drastic of circumstances. And this carried over into the upbringing of kids my age. For kids to use the "f-curse", as it was called, was to invite severe punishment by teachers and authorities. The "s-curse" was similar in that it was thoroughly in appropriate to use in any kind of public setting, or in the earshot of authority figures. Even "damn", "damned", "damnit", and the like, were sometimes considered too raw and disrespectful by elders, probably owing to the religious proscriptions and connotations associated with the words. I recall being censured by a school chaperone for using the phrase with a friend, "Damn you!" During that time, coming out of the more puritanical 1950s-60s, words like "hell" were still somewhat proscribed due to their religiously negative connotations and were seen as disrespectful to God. I recall overhearing a conversation between a young girl and her mother at a public place, in which the little girl in her playful descriptions of a fanciful story, described something about "hell", and the little girl remarked observantly that her mother's eyes lit up with surprise and dismay with the child used the word, "hell". I recall speaking with a friend who is retired military about the excessive use of the word, "f*ck" in a military context, but that even when he was growing up in the American south (Texas, to be precise), in the 1950s-60s, he rarely heard the word in daily speech, being far too crass to be used by anyone in polite company. And children would get their mouths washed out with soap (a popular punishment in those days for children displaying a "dirty mouth") if they were heard to use the foulest of language. Think of the movie, A Christmas Story, set in the 1950s, but filmed in 1983, where Ralphie accidentally says "f*ck" in front if his father, and it is considered the most egregious of offenses. So, I think that at least in the U.S., while people did swear, it tended to be a lot more mild in comparison to today, and it was much more dependent upon the circumstances, and certainly kept out of polite or mixed company. Growing up, I heard "son of a bitch" from the most crass elements of my working class Italian and German family than I ever heard "f*ck". Thanks for providing a forum to share these experiences.

[@dr.arikgreenberg25]

@@erikarommel I love it! Thanks for this. Did you ever hear Sigismundo Malatesta as a sort of insult? A great aunt used that one. I later found out it was a reference to a historical personage.

[@otsoko66]

I grew up as a middle-class kid in the deep south of the US (as well as in central Mexico). I didn't even know you could swear in English until I got to middle school (although I knew all the swear words in Mexican Spanish.) I had just never heard anyone swear in English. I was convinced my parents didn't know the word 'shit', until I used it at the dinner table -- my mom, expert at rapping knuckles with her dinner knife, immediately disabused me of that notion.

[@amandachapman4708]

When I was a student in the 70s, the boys routinely swore amongst themselves, but the girls didn't swear. I shocked one of the boys who was having a dig at me when I told him to fuck off. Even the (male) lecturer turned round and smiled at the unexpectedness of it. It was the first time I ever swore and I was 19 at the time. These days I swear more freely but I do watch who is around and for me there are some people and some situations that prevent swearing.

[@emmaritahart]

Sheesh, I'm an Aussie right, and I think the first time I ever swore was at, hm, 19 months? disc: this is a complete joke I was actually 6 years old the first time I swore. I think it was the 'bitch' word I felt so bold and liberated but it was just the beginning.

[@oldfrend]

@@emmaritahart creative swearing is a strong indicator of creativity and intelligence. let it flow through you =D

[@lisahinton9682]

@Amanda Chapman I wish you'd thought to include your country. I, too, am a child of the 1970s and noticed the exact same thing - the boys would swear (mostly to look "cool" to their pals) but the girls rarely, if ever, did. I never swore in school, even on the playground where there was a minimal adult-presence.

[@amandachapman4708]

@@lisahinton9682 the UK, specifically England

[@FrozenMermaid666]

The big terms ama and man cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be changed, and the words girls and boys only reflect me & my pure protectors aka the alphas, and must also be edited out - and big terms like God and food related terms and other purity related terms that only reflect me also cannot be misused in bad words!

[@bettyswallocks6411]

I recall being hauled over the coals and forced to apologise to a colleague, whom I had called “bloody minded”. Such was her dogged pursuit of an apology, my point was proved.

[@harveywallbanger3123]

"If I'd been meaning to call you stupid, I'd have called you bloody feeble minded. But you're not, you're just bloody bloody minded."

[@AlisonWonderland999]

Loving the comments section and insights into generational/regional differences! I'm 60 years old and grew up in the UK Midlands. I'm the youngest of the family, and swear a lot more than my older brothers, but only with people I know -- I wouldn't dream of swearing to a stranger of my generation or older. I never heard my parents or grandparents swear, except the word "bloody" which was considered extremely strong/risky. My parents (now 88 and 92 years old) will switch off a film or TV show at the first mention of "the F word" or, God forbid, anything worse (the word "cunt" is unimaginably unspeakable). My dad blames US culture for the proliferation of swearing; he and my mum consider it a general lowering of standards. When I went off to university, my dad's parting advice to me was never to swear, as it would make me look "cheap". I'm married to a younger man (i.e. different generation) who swears a lot, and my brother once asked me to have a word with him about it as in his view, this makes him sound aggressive. My brother also said he'd hesitate to let us near his grandchildren for fear that they might pick up "bad language" from us. Given this background, I'm fascinated by how relaxed the younger generation is with swearing. I've always felt that the self-censorship in my family, and perhaps in others like us, comes from a sort of anxiety about social climbing -- wanting to be seen as better than rough people (my parents were from working-class backgrounds but became teachers, so were the first generation to become middle-class). Once I started working, I soon noticed that wealthier folk never seem to have worried so much about making a good impression and tended to swear without the painful self-consciousness I'd grown up with. I feel that judging someone negatively for swearing is incredibly naive: the nicest people I know "swear like troopers" and some utter psychopaths are extremely well-spoken. Yet this attitude persists. I really like the way the internet can help to promote a more relaxed and natural culture.

[@alexandrasmith8868]

I'm the same age and from the South West Mids. My family were factor workers but were still well presented and had a pride in their homes. My husband was from Singapore where factory jobs were highly sought after. When he started work in a Redditch factory, he couldn't get over the foul mouthed women there thirty years ago.

[@bruno4president]

"hi class! did everyone bring the assignments today?" 17:54

[@ahmaddjibran205]

Wow Man.

[@Wertsir]

I like reading the Pompeii Graffiti, because it’s the exact same shit you would expect to see today. Except written two thousand years ago. People don’t change.

[@nina241085]

I think my favourite was in a latrine - ‘sh*t well and b*gger the doctors’

[@emilyfarfadet9131]

I have to say, having grown up in America and spent 4 years in England, I think your average Brit is more likely to call a stranger a curse word (or a pet name for that matter) casually and without malice. In my experience when an American cusses out a stranger it's way more likely to come from genuine anger- and in the case of pet names, passive aggression. It's interesting because it makes swearing both more and less shocking for its casual quality. I found it really refreshing, as well as just an interesting reminder of how flexible and contextual language really is.

[@Timotimo101]

For what my experience is worth, I grew up in Tennessee but moved to New England just over 20 years ago. It was somewhat shocking to hear people swearing as publicly as is done here. I'm not saying people don't swear in TN (they certainly do) but it's generally frowned upon (in "good company") for it to be displayed. At the very least when I still lived there it was considered, maybe, low class and rude and definitely not done in front of children. Even now I tend to do it privately or somewhat under my breath rather than openly. It feels to me as though it goes along with something to do with politeness and having better manners - which is another reason it would be frowned upon in the South because there is a high value placed on politeness when in public. I don't know exactly how much this holds true today but I have returned several times to visit family and friends and I think it's still an accurate observation applicable to 2020.

[@StarlightEater]

Yea I remember getting into fights a lot down south for my liberal use of profanity in the mid to late 90s. Fuck em

[@Laura-kl7vi]

Interesting. I hadn't encountered it hardly at all. But these things differ depending on people's age, gender, education/profession.

[@spacejack400]

Well he's not English, but Mozart seemed to enjoy profanity.

[@fleeb]

He certainly enjoyed the humor of scatology.

[@faithlesshound5621]

What I've seen (in translation) of his letters to his sister and wife is very scatological: was there a code?

[@t.c.bramblett617]

@@faithlesshound5621 Nah, just German/Austrian!

[@Bjowolf2]

@@t.c.bramblett617 From the village of Fucking by any chance? 😅

[@tinkerwithstuff]

​@@faithlesshound5621 Even though it is often translated wrongly. "Scheiß ins Bett daß' kracht!" means "Fart in your bed so that it trembles / makes loud noise". It does not mean "Shit in your bed...", even though "scheiß" usually is related to shit, it is also used to say fart, and the last part of the sentence is a dead giveaway.

[@F_Karnstein]

I love how you slipped into swearing yourself twice in this video 😄 In my native German I would say it's quite similar - that people of the generation of my grandparents probably actually swore less and they pride themselves in that. I'm 38 now, and I at least cannot say that it changed significantly since my childhood. I learned that "Scheiße" is a bad word and was scolded for using it, but absolutely knew that it's completely normal nevertheless because everybody uses it all the time (I know my parents did) - my own daughter is five now and she knows it's considered rude and frequently asks me if the current occasion (losing in a game, bumping your knee on the table,...) is one that she might be allowed to say "Scheiße" - it's actually quite cute. What I find very interesting is that "ficken" is hardly ever used in any context but the literal one of sexual intercourse - only in the last twenty-odd years things like "verfickt" have come up mimicking English "fucking", but in fact the English "fuck" has been completely adopted in German - as an exclamation "oh, fuck!" as well as not seldom even in contexts like "dieser fucking Stuhl!" ("this fucking chair!" - again imagine hitting your knee on it or something similar).

[@michaelhamburg9804]

I can 100% second that. Well put. Gruesse aus Boston an Deutschland!

[@oliviareedwrites5929]

Danke, I’m going to add these “sentence enhancers” to my German~

[@davidwarren7279]

I THOUGHT he swore once or twince in the video (such as when when he noticed something about the heater). I was a bit shocked at first (not very academic!) but then I remembered all the other swear words he'd used when talking about swearing.

[@eindummkopf2970]

@@davidwarren7279 same lol

[@FrozenMermaid666]

The big terms love and absolutely and words like daughter / datter (too similar to nature related terms) only reflect me the only lovable being aka the absolute being, and cannot be misused in comments etc, and must be edited out, and the words kar and stein also cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be changed and edited out - and big terms like God and food related terms and other purity related terms that only reflect me also cannot be misused in bad words!

[@nooripuss1]

As a child growing up in the 1950's and '60's in the US, I never heard swear words. I think this was because my parents thought of themselves as socially upwardly mobile and equated swearing with being lower class. In any case, I never heard adults swear around children and children who swore around each other were considered very naughty. When I left home to attend college, I started swearing as an act of rebellion, as did many of my peers, male and female. I as grew older, I noticed that men and women did not swear around each other as much as they did when speaking to their own sex and without thinking about it, I followed suit. Now I have noticed that people of both sexes swear quite freely with their work peers if they are near the same age as themselves. I once thought this was unique to my own profession (psychotherapy), but I also know physicians, scientists, teachers, lawyers, and computer programers who would claim theirs is the most foul-mouthed profession.

[@cr0uchingtiger]

My dad was an incredibly violent man but never swore in front of his parents and never let me swear around him even into his 70s when I was married.

[@yadfaraidoon9977]

in kurdish the word “shit” means “item” or “stuff”. it’s funny how a swear word in english is completely benign in kurdish, considering they are both Indo-European languages

[@tomatomelvin]

We do this too, at least in american english, like saying "get this shit out of here" or "it's somewhere under this other shit".

[@jacobarmour6325]

@@tomatomelvin also in Britain

[@kosmo-kamikaze]

In Russian "shit" ("щит") means "shield"

[@JarJarBinks123]

In America we kind of have the same meaning, for example: “that’s a lot of shit”

[@Xrelent]

Identical words in distant languages are generally (a) recent loan words or (b) of completely different etymologies.

[@CJ-rx5fi]

Swearing in ancient times is one of my favorite subjects for some reason. Carved graffiti in Roman ruins and all that sort of thing. I love the monk cursing the Abbott! He must have been having a rough day. 😆

[@trappistpreserves]

Me too. It absolutely makes them relatable. And we want to relate to them.

[@vavovidnica]

God bless his soul. How astonished he would be if he knew that his writing was talked about in 2020. God bless everyone reading this in any time! Cheers from Croatia !

[@aramisortsbottcher8201]

@@vavovidnica I haven't heard about it, where can I read about it?

[@user-ox2mz8ds7g]

A bit late to the conversation,but it's been found swearing increases the threshold for pain ,so the saying ' swearing like a trooper ' makes much more sense.

[@derin111]

I grew in a working class street in South London in the 1960s. Public and open swearing actually wasn’t that common even by adults and was definitely very frowned upon. I got physically disciplined (that means hit!) by another boy’s mother when she overheard me say “bloody” whilst playing in the street. Such inter-familial task-sharing was entirely acceptable back then in the area where I grew up. 😂

[@cragnamorra]

I think another related factor may be that "swearing" in past times involved words or phrases that have fully lost their shock impact today, or may have fallen out of usage entirely. We might read something from a century-plus year old document that doesn't strike us as swearing at all, but may have been quite harsh or provocative in its day. HBO had a pretty popular series a few years ago called Deadwood, set in the 1870s American West. It engendered a bit of controversy in its dialogue, which featured a lot of pretty harsh-but-modern language; it was criticized for being anachronistic in this regard. The show's creators, iirc, readily acknowledged this, and justified their choice by an argument that basically went something like: "Yeah, we deliberately did that. If we'd used actual "bad language" from the period, it would've sounded merely quaint to the modern ear, and the audience wouldn't have even realized they were swearing at all. So we used modern words in order to clearly and immediately reflect the crassness of the environment of a 19th century frontier mining town."

[@erstenamefamiliename7988]

Very interesting point!

[@testname4464]

Nowadays, words like "fuck" are pretty tame in general conversation (as discussing sex isn't taboo), while words like "retard" are sometimes seen as worse than "cunt" (as mental health is taken much more seriously). Keep in mind, I live in southern Californa, so it might he different in Alabama or Arkansas.

[@georgew2014]

I remember that criticism about Deadwood. Swearing in the old West would have referenced religion in some way, like "God damn."

[@Gaff.]

I always felt they could have used period-accurate swearing and it would have worked if the acting were good enough. I curse like a sailor and my girlfriend's even worse, but when we watched it, I think we both saw the extreme frequency of modern obscenities as an attempt at garnering viewers via edginess. . Somewhat related, I wrote a book set in the late 19th century about a band of criminals and they cursed a lot. But I used period-accurate swearing and censored it with dashes, which made it look much more serious. So for example, a character may exclaim surprise by shouting, 'Mother of G-d!' or if they were angry with someone they may call them a 'bl--dy scoundrel'. I was always proud of the way I handled that, but the book isn't great and I hope I get round to fixing it someday.

[@sleekoduck]

This is why I, as an American, prefer the word bloody. Its arcane shock value packs a punch that the overused Big Three fail to deliver, plus it has that nice continental undertone in its rudeness.

[@hiiminafield]

The colour palette in this video is ridiculously pleasing

[@lunabouch]

I never heard an adult say “fuck”until I worked in a factory one summer(1969) during summer recess from high school. I remember telling my girlfriend at the time. We though only our age group said it! 😂

[@Raysnature]

I would echo some of the thoughts around swearing (or not) in front of certain groups of people. I was bourn in 1961 in SE London. I never heard my dad use one of the 'curse' words; the worst, when things were going horribly wrong, would be strewth. Occasionally bloody. I don't remember much about my language use at school but I don't think I swore a lot. This changed when I started work and therefore exposed to a more adult environment and in those days one predominantly male. I understood and often heard it said you shouldn't swear in front of women and children. To this day that's a behaviour I tend to follow and in general think I swear less than most men of my generation in all circumstances anyway. Probably because of the example of dad. I do believe in the philosophy that if you hear me swear you know there is an issue and I wonder how younger people (and I think you are right in saying it is more predominant among the younger generation) put an emphasis in a sentence? For example if I said 'get a fucking move on' you would know I seriously wanted to speed things up and it was urgent to do so. It would come as a surprise and certainly not something I would normally say even in a work context. So how would a young person generate that extra sense of urgency given the expletive would probably be there in normal speech?

[@TheLonelyAssassin98]

𝕱𝖚𝖈𝖐 𝖞𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖓𝖙𝖘

[@vladdik7063]

Nice fraktur,bro

[@YTLSF]

𝖋𝖚𝖈𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖇𝖇𝖔𝖙

[@Pr0SV1p3r]

Listening to intelligent British youth monologue ASMR.

[@username-mf7zx]

Hē is Englisc, ne Bryttisc.

[@jlmusicproductions6105]

Johann Sebastian Dude, he clearly referred to the differentiation between anglos and britons in the early middle ages.

[@jackwilliams6604]

@@username-mf7zx if he is English then that makes him british. Same way that I am Welsh. I'm also British.

[@MellonVegan]

Interesting. I feel like in Germany, too, we've started to swear more in the past 20-ish years but that may just be a byproduct of growing up. I also swear SO MUCH MORE in English than in German. Comes with the Northern accent, I think.

[@mikeg3660]

Really intelligently and humbly presented. Love the the last quote.

[@OriginalCosmicBabe]

My mother always said my third word (after Dada & Mama) was “shit” so I must have heard it very often to be saying it at age 1! My dad was a Navy sailor of 23 and my mom was a farm girl of 18 when I was born in 1969 (both of them grew up in rural Oregon, USA). I’m told that the first time I was heard to say fuck was calling my younger sister a “little fucker” when I was 5 - and I got spanked for it. My mother made a strong effort not to swear in front of us kids once we were out of diapers and she realized we were imitating her. I never heard my dad swear unless he was drunk, or was hanging out with a fellow sailor and didn’t realize kids could overhear. When I was raising my kids in the 1990s, I didn’t want them to find swear words to be as deliciously forbidden as they were to me growing up, so I instituted a rule that they were allowed to say anything they wanted if they went into the bathroom and shut the door. By the time they were in high school, I didn’t enforce that rule and I allowed swearing in the house (as long as grandparents weren’t visiting). They were good kids and didn’t “talk a blue streak”. Oddly enough, I definitely swear more in casual conversation than they do (now as adults). Possibly it’s because I was raised on military bases and then, after my parents divorced, in rural Oregon, whereas my kids grew up in urban Oregon (where perhaps swearing wasn’t considered as naughty).

[@thomaslong8401]

My daughters first word after mama and dada was sock. Her second word was shit. She had repeating shit after I had said it.

[@Amcsae]

I kinda like your rule about having a designated space to be able to say whatever you want. That's one to remember!

[@glitter.gollum6984]

My first word was fuck hahah, to the absolute horror of my grandma who was trying to teach me to say "fork" (dinner time). Safe to say that the pattern was continued to adulthood.

[@tracik1277]

Interesting stuff in all these comments. My parents never swore in the house (and they were from South London, so not posh at all) - until us kids learned swear words from school, then they did. I always found that weird. However, I still felt uncomfortable saying fuck in front of my mum for some reason.

[@thethrashyone]

My 3 year old nephew recently dropped his first "what the fuck was that?" in front of me and my mom. Mom was kind of horrified but I wasn't at all surprised; my sister swears like a goddamn sailor after all, _of course_ kids who are just picking up language are going to mimic what their parents say.

[@philipdavis7521]

In my (Irish) experience the clear difference was class, or aspiring class. Growing up in a family that awkwardly spanned working and middle class, it was those relatives who felt themselves a bit socially superior who would always avoid curse words. In the west of Ireland when on holiday it was noticeable even to me as a child in the 1970's that the bigger farmers (those who aspired to send their kids to University) would avoid cursing, or go for the Irish 'feck' as an alternative, while my more working class/ small farmer/fishermen relatives would curse happily all day long. It was exactly the same in the city. My friends who went to private (Jesuit) schools almost never cursed, in complete contrast to those going to Christian Brothers schools.

[@mackbrown1570]

My experience entirely

[@jduff59]

My older relatives were strict Catholics and I never heard any of them swear, but if I was an adult I would have probably hear some good ones.

[@jumhed994]

My farmer Grandad in the West of Ireland said 'Feck' all the time. I think it's a Gaelic word.

[@pennychewer8931]

Seeing you slowly getting more and more popular makes me happy. Wish you the best.

[@gosulivan]

I love love your channel. Thank you for sharing your passion. 👏👏

[@bent.5062]

I'm 25, have worked in the service industry since I was about 17, and swear profusely. It's just a part of working in that industry; especially with bar guests (of a certain kind) it helps to just break down walls and get real real, real quick. In the US, it's an easy signal to say, "I'm cool, you're cool, let's be cool and have fun." And not just at townie or dive bars, but at really high-end joints as well. Everyone wants to feel in-the-know, and when the bartender with a bowtie talks the right shit, older folks really dig it. But I shock myself with my ability to hold it back when I'm taking classes, or in certain company, or wherever. There, I use expletives for emphasis and less haphazardly than I do behind the stick. It's wild how something so intuitive and ingrained can be flipped like a switch depending on the room. Great video as always; a genuine highlight of my day!

[@martynnotman3467]

Fascinating. No the "c" word is used all over here in Yorkshire. Ive even been called it by an old lady 😂

[@sethfrisbie9840]

Martyn Notman are there any regions left in the United Kingdom that still talk in the empire accent? Sincerely an American who still talks in a English accent empire to be precise.Even after 5 centuries in the New World I only have English ancestors.They fought for American Independence and against the Confederates.

[@martynnotman3467]

@@sethfrisbie9840 if by "Empire" you mean the accent of Pathe newsreels and Queen Mary then no not really, but then most of us didnt talk like that in the 19th Century anyway! It clings on amongst the very posh elites

[@Floral_Green]

Seth Frisbie I think you’re referring to ‘Received Pronunciation’, which is an acquired mode of speech that must be learned from elocution training. Nobody speaks that way naturally, even among the upper-middle/upper classes.

[@Floral_Green]

BrackynMor I’m not sure that Americans are really exposed to Manc/Lancashire, given that Brummie - a wider distributed accent - is anathema to them. What part of England are you from to have Londoners question your accent, despite only hailing 10 miles north? Unless I misunderstood(?)

[@setho1231]

Seth Frisbie everyone named seth is so strange man

[@bennichols9034]

Oh, Simon ... Brilliant! Fascinating! Love it!

[@michellejordan5455]

Just discovered you and your channel. Your swearing video interested me because my grandmother said my grandfather never swore at all, ever. My dad, however, said his father "swore like a trooper" but only in the company of men, never in the vicinity of women or children. The language used in Tasmania is interesting in that we still live in small family communities originally settled 200 years ago, it is common for people in those communities to still use the original language spoken because it is passed from generation to generation and especially the "sayings". Also, we can change up our accent and intonation if necessary to speak in a way as not to be understood by others, this includes saying the same word in different ways to have different meanings.

[@mackbrown1570]

I'm old. When I was young in Surrey, swearing was class based. Above a certain class one did not swear in public, it was stiff upper lip, old boy. Women due to their virtue did not swear except to very good friends. Men swore manly swear words (which all us boys struggled to learn, and when to use them). Using the wrong kind of of swear word in the wrong time or place was at best going to get you some ribbing from the mates or ostracism as someone who did not know the basics that 'everyone' knew about how to act. Lower classes could swear more in public. Why? Because they didn't have social standing (not standards, but standing) to maintain. If you pronounced the h in herb you had more standing than those that didn't, and swear words probably followed the same rule.

[@simonroper9218]

Being from Surrey myself (but having few relatives here to ask), this is very interesting! Did you find that people considered to be lower-class used the same sorts of swear words as indiscriminately (in the right situations) as younger people do today? For example, would the cast of 'Only Fools and Horses' have been swearing like troopers if they'd been allowed by the BBC?

[@mackbrown1570]

Well, I'm a poor one to discuss evolution of Surrey slang, we called it patois, as I've been living overseas. But yes there were differences in slang swearing. Swearing was there but sort of forced out of one by the situation. It wasn't gratuitous. It wasn't Cockney. In fact I notice that Londoners sound more Cockney than before. Even the Queen, a bit, if you compare her casual speech compared to 1950. My personal theory is that you aren't listening to Received English Pronunciation any more. Maybe you can discuss The Great Cockney Shift sometime. Back to swearing. Good old English short words strung together. Saying Bitch to someone was about the worst Usually it was coded - he's right barmy in the head, eh wot? type of thing. Swearing angrily but without losing composure - you were the lesser man if you gave in to anger. Some times Crikey or Bloody 'ell but clearly those were borrowed from the butcher shop. They indicated that the person you were cussing out deserved a lower class word. But swearing was rare and Not Done. I really don't remember swearing in conversation at my boarding school. I know father would swear at subordinates at work sometimes, but always in private, unless the whole group had badly fucked up (his words). Swearing was all downward facing at work, if you get what I mean. So usually the swearing was at the situation someone had created, not the person. You'd swear at the flat Tyre, not the person who had patched it poorly. That's how it was in our circles anyways. By the way, there used to be a convention, among young men and adults (after university), to not use a person's given name until they asked you to. Which might be never if they didn't like you. It was a privilege and indicated a closer and trusted level of friendship. Is it still like that? And as others have mentioned, ex military and dust-bin men got a free pass on swearing if it was occasional, not directed at someone present , and especially if creative. That yellow bellied son of an ass what has he done to me this time, that kind of thing. Ass was double entendre so a little bit clever. Most people, if they were going swear, used words like Shugar lumps, sheise (German was OK), same with Merde, Hell, Fuck, Damn. Crikey and Bloody 'ell as above. Fitting the words into a sentence took the edge off' 'where the hell shall I get a new Tyre at 2 AM' I think I have said things around 3 times to give you different angles, hopefully that helps. I enjoy your videos, even the technical ones.

[@mackbrown1570]

One other thing I just realized: swearing was not always needed as there were other ways to express your displeasure: reverting to using their surname, which implied they should use yours, at least for that conversation, tone of voice, facial expressions and how they look at you, their saying they were 'terribly disappointed in your work/behavior/conduct... I think there was a lot of coded verbal and non-verbal communication, and you did not want to be deaf to that, or you would be ostracized/not promoted/not invited, etc. Perhaps that is why people swore less; other options were available, you didn't want to mess it up, and consequences could be severe if you did!

[@groppermilk]

@@mackbrown1570 -- A German here (an old one like you). You mentioned 'sheise', adding that swearing in German was OKAY!! Hilarious! 😂🤣

[@davidmiller9485]

@@mackbrown1570 I'm one of the few rare southern "Gentlemen" left in the U.S. and the facial expressions and body language plus tone were central to our upbringing. You said sir or ma'am unless they told you otherwise. To do anything else was disrespectful and would get you into all kinds of social hot water. The "rules" are fairly complex and it's more than just swearing but it kept us civil and respectful (plus thoughtful). Keep in mind, like most things there were negative parts as well. Sometimes the conventions were followed to the detriment of everyone.

[@LordJazzly]

There's actually a divide in contemporary Australian English between people for whom "the c-word" [dramatic fanfare] is just about the worst thing you can say, and people who think of it as only marginally worse than 'bloody' or 'bugger' (Which are both considered quaint, because we're all slightly insane over here). Drop the word in any given room and some people will flinch as if you just physically _hit_ them; others will hardly even react. And I have no idea why; it doesn't seem to line up with other dialect gradations. It's very strange. Edit: Also in Australia, to me the phrase 'swear like a trooper' implies that a person swears so heavily and frequently that they - no longer stick to set phrases, and instead invent their own expressions on the fly. Sort of swearing as an art form.

[@pattheplanter]

That is how i saw "swear like a trooper" as well, though as a _competitive_ art form like rapping or Scrabble.

[@davidwall2919]

@@rook6115 I can speak in front of POMs and they have little idea what I am talking about...eg feed the Chooks

[@TheStarBlack]

@@davidwall2919 chickens

[@CC-8891]

I am from Boston which has a very Irish and English history. Most people will look at like you're a barbarian if you say the "c" word loud enough for them to notice. It's not really used in general conversation unless it's being used in a descriptive way. It's a gendered swear used to describe a woman so evil and obnoxious that "Bitch" just doesnt quite drive home the sentiment. A male would not call another male a "c" like they do in Great Britain. That would sound funny to us Yanks. Americans seem to prefer the term "pu**y" when describing female anatomy. It can also be used to describe a male that is a coward, along with the word "bitch". I will say that in my expierence people swear more in small circles that they are more comfortable in.

[@danieldeburgh8437]

@@CC-8891 I'm from Ireland where many find the word 'cunt' totally acceptable. Mostly middle aged and older women find it outlandish, and thus I believe it's shock factor will die-off. For example, someone might say to his friend, "ah you cunt" either being annoyed or bemused.

[@TheJoemm]

When I was in a history class in college, we read the book Albion Seed. It detailed different British regional customs that were imported into the American colonies. I remember reading that the Scotts- Irish used a lot of profanity and named a river in West Virginia "tickle my cunt river." I was born in 89. My parents sometimes swore, but almost never used the F word. My grandmother on my moms side was the same way. My grandparents on my Dad side almost never swore. Other kids parents were different though. By the time, I was in 5th grade all the kids swore, but not in front of adults. In high school many kids I know would comfortably swear as much as they wanted in front of their parents. Interested in this topic, I've been really curious about this for a while. I 'd be interested to hear about how attitudes toward bad language have changed, or where the concept of swearing came from.

[@thebusinessfirm9862]

I must say, as an Australian I found this video very interesting, but also amusing when towards the end you mentioned how sweaty you were because it was 27 degrees! Mate, that is a MILD day in Adelaide! 47 is considered hot. Thanks for making such great content. All the best.

[@vapeangel2953]

From the amount of swearing us Australians do today, I’m assuming that the lower class (convicts) that were imported here from 1788 also swore a lot and it’s made its way down the generations as a cultural norm 😂 bloody oath do we swear!

[@jungleknifetrader715]

i think it was less common that people think.. or at least many words used today in australia were generally tabboo. theres a great video of an old australian man in paraguay .. it shot in the 1990s or so i guess.. he still speaks with a perfect 19th century australian accent.. being one of the remaining descendants of the original australian colonists tat came there after the big waves of social unrest in australian in the late 19th century.... and he makes great mention in one part of the interview that he "dosnt swear, gamble or drink" . so id guess the about of profanity was much more suppressed than it is now.. ..

[@icresp4263]

@@jungleknifetrader715 I would even go ahead and say that him mentioning that meant that there were definitely people swearing so him not doing so was out of the norm. But we'll never know

[@whiterabbit3618]

As a Brit, I absolutely love the wild abandon you guys have when it comes to the word CUNT. I use it freely but you guys have mastered the art.

[@Domonkofunk]

Best video yet & I'm not just talking about the sideburns.

[@BUTTERVISION]

Interesting insight. I’d never heard the term “minced oaths” and hadn’t even noticed the connection between “for Christ’s sake” and “for crying out loud”. Good stuff

[@sammyanne1985]

You are absolutely terrific! Any chance of a video on English colloquialisms, I'd love to know more.

[@chungdzee]

What comes to mind is Grape street In london that was changed from cunt grope street, as it was named in the middle ages.

[@martynnotman3467]

Theres one in Lincoln too. And a few others.

[@PiousMoltar]

Sluts Hole Lane still exists in Norfolk :D

[@Face2theScr33n]

Big Bone Lick, Kentucky has NO swear words, but it's still funny.

[@stephaniewilson3955]

A lot of these lanes were renamed, mostly in the mid-Wars period as they were considered vulgar and embarrassing by certain people.

[@Tipi_Dan]

Some American English minced oaths for "God damn it!": "Dad gum it!" "Dog gone it!" "Dag nab it!"

[@Blaergh]

Dag nab it is my favorite.

[@_julecc759]

dag nab it sounds like something a sim from the sims would say lol

[@jiveassturkey8849]

You forgot the simple “dang it”

[@Xrelent]

Gosh darn it, I was gonna say that.

[@lesnyk255]

"Golldang it!" "Jeezum Crow!" "Jeepers Creepers!" "Jiminy Christmas" "Son of a gun!" "Son of a biscuit!"

[@rajasumalkar7636]

Your channel is super underrated

[@mikesloothaak679]

I think "swear like a trooper" or "swear like a sailor" alludes to the possibly of generational differences. The young men that went into WWII and experienced so much stress might well have adopted a more profane language that they could call upon for the rest of their lives to express frustration, surprise, etc. and also be a jargon they could resort to with other veterans to invoke a sense of shared experience and solidarity. Therefore they might not use profanity in front of "non-combatants" for reasons other than mere prudishness. If that veteran population is large enough, the next generation can pick up on that style of communication and mimic it to express similar ideas or solidarities. Thus words like "fuck" especially which may have been rarely used before WWII become commonplace after it. American Viet Nam vets seem to have invented "fuckin' A" which (to a lesser extent) found its way into American English as an emphatic affirmative, but one which is disappearing along with that generation. It becomes a code word not just for "yes!" but to signal a shared stressful experience. So I would hesitate to conclude that people swore equally over history, but suggest instead exploring the possibility we shouldn't try to place this type of language into a transhistorical "profanity" category, but rather consider "profane" speech as scars or relics left in a language originating when its speakers go through especially stressful long-term events, and that the use becomes "profane" when a community or new generation would rather not recall such an event. For example, "cunt" or "nigger" develops a "profane" and forbidden status as a result of the social upheavals and bad feelings created by the rise of feminism and racial equality. Many in society don't want to hear those old words because they remind them of past bad times, others embrace them as a type of protest and to express solidarity with a non-conformist cohort. Another example would be the "profane" contemporary status of some Nazi buzz words used to express racial superiority like "untermensch". Also consider terms like "queer" which get rehabilitated from profane status. kzbin.info/www/bejne/kHbHo4SMd7Kph5Y

[@holofernez]

your sideburns be looking extra luscious today my good sir

[@camatzuma]

kei Friend, our profile pictures unite us, we shall grow in numbers

[@holofernez]

@@camatzuma POG

[@tosgem]

I'm 40. I am old enough to remember old people in the 80's who were born in the late 1890's and early 1900's. They didn't swear at all, which might just be an old people thing. But I remember even my grandparents, in their 50's and 60's at the time, didn't swear much but ABSOLUTELY watched their language around these old people. I wasn't too scared of my grandparents but the sense was we all walked on eggshells around the great grandparents and people that old.

[@SixteenJacobsCreams]

@@new-lviv funnily enough ofcom actually regulates swear words in that way on a semi-official basis. www.digitalspy.com/tv/a809925/ofcom-swear-words-ranking-in-order-of-offensiveness/

[@meemurthelemur4811]

"I'm getting sweaty because it's fucking 28 degrees in here." Yup.

[@MADMACHlNE]

You describing the British usage of _cunt_ reminds me of an online discussion I once lurked where an AmE speaker said he loved how casually British people used the word before a BrE speaker snapped at him and said "No we don't, and don't you DARE ever use that word over here yourself!" When I read that reply, I couldn't help but thinking, "Wow, what a middle-class cunt." I'm an AmE speaker myself, so I was a bit surprised to realize that in my own head I had just used not only the word _cunt_ in the British way, but also the word _middle-class._

[@tomvesely4008]

Noone: KZbin: Guy fluent in Old English talks about swearing. Me: HELL YEAH!

[@theloafabread4341]

This was frikkin interesting

[@GandalfTheGay98]

watch your hecking language

[@commandergree1231]

Darn you

[@reeves76]

you kiss your mama with that mouth?

[@semproser19]

You talk awfully bawdy if I may say so myself

[@andyoli75]

Watch your gorram language.

[@marlashaw7399]

I have always wanted to teach a class on "The Art of Swearing" because there IS an art to it if you want to think in terms of upgrading the concept of swearing. My Mom said I sat at my little table and chairs and practiced swear words when I was 4....late 50's. Sometimes there is just no better word to use!

[@daveowen7372]

Interesting stuff mate Subscribed!

[@faithlesshound5621]

I don't know if others have noticed an escalation in swearing over the past few decades: once a word becomes acceptable it loses shock value and has to be intensified or replaced. "Bloody" used to be slightly taboo, became more common and now, as it goes unremarked, has little effect and may be dying out.

[@AndrewTheFrank]

Reminds me how memes flair up in popularity, everyone laughs until its unfunny, and then its tossed to the side as yesterday's trash. swear words are basically memes.

[@faithlesshound5621]

@@AndrewTheFrank Yes, but swearing has the additional factor of breaking taboo. Some people have intensified the F-word by prefixing "Mother" to it, others have shortened the compound to just "Mother," so you have to know the history to be shocked at all. Once all the sexual and excretory words have come into everyday use, what will the "Shock Jocks" do next? My guess is that they will go down the less forbidden byways of sexuality, starting with gay or paedophile terminolgy, according to taste. I could be wrong: racial, class, religious or political terms might come to be misused instead. Examples: a Shakespearean villain may be called a "scurvy knave." Scientologists call muggles "Wogs." Elon Musk persuaded an LA jury that "pedo guy" was a term of abuse free of any imputation of sexual impropriety. Will Polari make a comeback?

[@budderbrinejr]

@@faithlesshound5621 I thought "wog" was an old slur for african people?

[@offaofmercia3329]

I remember teachers using 'ruddy' as an anodyne decaff alternative in 1980s.

[@tosgem]

I remember getting in trouble for saying bloody when I was a kid in the 80's

[@sensengine]

I like the old-timey, steampunk contraption that you include prominently in the frame but neither mention nor explain... One aspect that you don't get into here is that, pre-1960's, the use of profanity was very much a class marker. I think that was the case not just in the Anglophone world, either. It wouldn't be hard to imagine these terms being in heavy rotation in Cockney communities and their analogues among the urban poor in America, but increasingly rare as you moved up the social ladder. Amongst the older generations, some still alive, the use of these terms mars you as being "born in the gutter" or "born in a barn". These days, wealthy young people relish "street lingo" just as much as they do working class attire and pop culture---but that wasn't always the case. The mid-1960s was a watershed era in which class consciousness evaporated rapidly (of course it still exists and is still just as potent--just in subtler forms). You did touch on the fact that the use of profanity was more gendered in this pre-1960s era as well, since the use of profanity was also a mark of machismo as well as low class status. Certain language was taboo in "mixed company". This is still the case in many non-white communities. I would be cautious about using Victorian pornography as an authentic record of common language in that era since such narratives intentionally used taboo terms and behavior to titillate. Profanity is also an aspect of language that's extremely contingent on context. I remember when I was studying Theatre Arts in college, the same professor who would swear casually in Acting and Directing classes would be very circumspect with her language and apologize whenever a swear word slipped out when she was teaching a dramatic literature course or literary theory course. It baffled me because it was the same professor teaching at the same university to mostly the same group of students, but she would "code switch" when teaching more academically respectable subject areas.

[@laurelthede7566]

I grew up in the US Midwest 1950’s . I don’t remember anyone swearing. They would replace shit with shoot, Damm with darn, You are so knowable. Keep up the good works

[@sidarthur8706]

it's a posh camping stove

[@Alien_Slurpee]

You make excellent points. As a computer scientist please bare my vocabulary on this subject, but there seems to be word association in social economical classes - even in a weird way where a person who is blue collar but works enough to move into a white collar / higher class community or society will still speak like those they are around. Their class in which they live would look at them as crude people due to this. Allowing for an awkward segregation. Just my observation - these topics are fun and interesting.

[@rach_laze]

Just one slight point of contention, the phrase born in a barn in my experience is used almost exclusively in regards to leaving a door open as one would a barn for cattle rather than the meaning you've put forwards here. Forgive me if I'm wrong but it's worth double checking the origin and meaning of the phrase

[@sensengine]

@@rach_laze Interesting: I guess that's the older sense of the term but the sense I've heard it used similarly disparages people of rural upbringing as uncouth, etc. I find the etymology of our English word "villain" similarly interesting: it originally referred to rural "yokels" who worked on old Roman villas in England and their supposed moral degeneracy. In America, where few people still work on farms, there tends to be a sentimentalizing of rural people as morally upright but it seems in the Old World this was not always the perception.

[@OscarFrosty]

🤣I had no idea why this video popped up on my feed but I am truly so glad that it did. Thank you for the education. 😂

[@elora8577]

I just really appreciate this man very much.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

“Crap” is one of those words that seems to have acquired a rude meaning it didn’t have originally. It wasn’t initially another word for “excrement”, but for “chaff” - the part you throw away when harvesting the grain, as in “separate the wheat from the crap”. Yeah, we know farming types can be pretty earthy and all ...

[@Wick9876]

I would guess that crap as a synonym for excrement derives from Thomas Crapper's invention being named after him. The crapper, of course, being the water closet, or toilet in modern American.

[@quiffpbacon]

The saying is “separate the wheat from the chaff”

[@thenecrolept]

@@quiffpbacon that.... that was his point, that crap and chaff were the same thing. :/

[@greg7656]

@@Wick9876 i think that's been pretty much debunked

[@endurance-adventures]

I tend to use 'crap' as a term for rubbish/ clutter/ things that are piled up in my way etc

[@BobXTM]

A neighbor across the street who served with the 81st from Normandy to Bastogne told me how he once captured a German soldier and ordered him: Haende hoch, oder ich scheisse! The poor guy could not stifle his laughter.

[@mariogonzalez4928]

Bob Eckert lmao

[@KirkirPL]

An elegant demonstration of how important it is to be mindful about your pronunciation

[@luminous3357]

Wow...very interesting. Shadiversity recently did a segment on the history of swearing, but he approached it from the standpoint of examining what would've been considered most offensive in different periods. He covered swearing (in the sense of an oath), profanity (in the religious sense) and cursing (in the context of mal-intent). He also discussed basic "swear words", as we would know them-- and how common their usage may have been.

[@knucklesamidge]

Fascinating. Thanks for that

[@TypicalRussianGuy]

In Russian, we've had a long history of swearing. In fact, we even have a special word for very hard swearing - ''материться'' and the very harsh or offensive words are usually classified as ''мат''. I was actually very shocked after watching this video. The fact of the matter is that in Russian we've had evidence of people casually using swearing words (for example, including swearing into private letters written on birch paper ''берестяные грамоты/birch bark manuscripts'') as far as early medieval times. For example, there is a medieval manuscript in which a man wrote ''brother, f**k horizontally'' which meant something like ''bro, stop trying to be so different''. And in the 18th century some poets were writing entire poems in which like 50%, if not 90% of words were offensive (maybe there is an exaggeration on my part, but yeah). In fact, some poets from ''the golden age of Russian poetry'' wrote how fascinated they were with the swearing ability the Russian language provides. Why I was shocked by your video is because modern speakers of English seem to swear way more than modern speakers of Russian, and we do swear a lot, I should say, although I feel as if we used to swear even more in the past. It is interesting how the speakers of Russian started to swear less over the centuries while the speakers of English started to swear more. That is not to say we swear very little in Russia, we still swear a lot, especially if we compare it with the Soviet times when all types of offensive swearing on TV or even in most books were not allowed, but I feel as if swearing now is not as popular as it was a few centuries ago (generally speaking).

[@MattFyrm]

Maybe there is some kind of rebound in the amount of swearing a society permits and English was just late to the party; a language will increase its swearing over the centuries untill it overshoots a socially stable position at which point it will start being decreased again. This would mean that the English language will tone down it's usage of swearing over the next centuries (look for example at political correctness movements)

[@t.c.bramblett617]

I learned Russian from secondary school through college (I am from USA) as my foreign language requirement. My best memories are of our teacher (he was Polish, actually) teaching us some choice words after class had ended. Only to the boys, of course, he was old school, he wouldn't teach them to the girls LOL

[@Floral_Green]

Matt The FakeDragon PC isn’t about policing expletives; it’s a social shaming device borne out of political goals. Ironically, the school of thought that brought it about was in opposition to traditional ethics of politeness on principle. Attacking standards of etiquette are baked into the cake of moral relativism.

[@beth7935]

@@t.c.bramblett617 LOL! Our German teacher in highschool said on day one: "I know you want to know the swearwords, & they're in the dictionaries you have, so look them up if you want, but NEVER use them in class- remember, I know exactly what they mean". This was 1989 in Australia, & she was otherwise very prim and proper, but that just shut down any silliness from the start. Impressive!

[@unnamedchannel2202]

О, блин, я никогда не матерюсь. )

[@westsaxon6107]

I remember reading that during the 100 year's war the French would occasionally refer to Englishmen as 'les goddames' in reference to how often they swore possibly in comparison to French soldiers at the time

[@offaofmercia3329]

I think some sources cite 'God almightig' as one of the English war cries at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 too.

[@differentlyabledmuslimjewi4475]

thats pretty funny.

[@tonywackett326]

My great grandmother swore like a trooper. She was born in the 1880s in London, kings X area. I imagine it as a family trait, lol, and can easily imagine it in generations before her.

[@CallemJay_McNeill]

I'm really enjoying your videos :)

[@IbnFarteen]

My dad, b. 1915, told me he rarely heard the word fuck growing up in New Jersey in the 1930s, but joked that after induction in the US Navy during the Second World War, it "was the only adjective."

[@jungleknifetrader715]

yeah... i think among religious population swearing was much suppressed until recently.. a great example is the isolate people of tristian de cuna.. a small island belonging to the U.K. .. i think some of these poeple never have swore in their lives..

[@Cjnw]

…except for " Oh, the fucking humanities!! "😛

[@tracik1277]

Angela Kindness I thought that referred to large marine mammals - oh, the huge manatees...

[@Cjnw]

@@tracik1277 LOL

[@astrogoodvibes6164]

I like the Monty Python softening of the cuss word that goes....''he spelled it politely, phuq''

[@brambam]

I had no intention on watching this through but I couldn't leave, it was too fascinating lol

[@TatianaRacheva]

I want to add that I never swear in my first language (Russian) and that in my generation (I'm 38), it was certainly something that some people did a lot, and others - not at all. In English, I've always been able to swear. I associate this with the influence of American films in the 80s and 90s, giving us the impression that swearing is commonplace. My husband, who is American, thinks I swear far too much and that my impression is wrong. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, and his opinion reflects his upbringing, not the culture of swearing in the US at large, in my observation. For me, English swearwords also don't carry the same emotional weight as the Russian ones do. I honestly can't say them, and it peeves me when people casually say Russian swearwords to me to show off their knowledge (or, rather, ignorance).

[@L3Arm]

I use a couple English (UK) vulgarisms as a native American speaker, in part because they don't have the same intensity. I have had to ask native UK speakers for guidance about offensiveness.

[@Muzer0]

​@@L3Arm Mmm, "wanker" and "bollocks" are occasionally thrown around on American daytime TV shows considered suitable for kids, when in the UK I'm fairly sure they'd be words you wouldn't expect to find before the 9pm watershed (though I'll have to brush up on the latest research to confirm this). They're still not particularly harsh swear words though, but they're just not the sort of thing I'd expect to find in a "family" piece of media. "Bloody" on the other hand is completely benign; it shares a lot of properties with swear words in terms of when it can be used (hence the wonderful Tom Scott video on expletive infixation), but causes virtually no offence. On the other hand there are slurs which I find are where the biggest misunderstandings can arise. "Spastic" in the US is a perfectly normal if relatively rare word meaning "erratic"; in the UK it (along with the shortened term "spaz") is considered an extremely offensive slur against those with cerebral palsy. Two video games had their European versions recalled due to this misunderstanding. Similarly amusing though as far as I'm aware never resulting in a recall was the film Jurassic World, which towards the beginning had a scene with people saying "The Pakis are out of containment again!" - Paki being in the UK an ethnic slur for someone from Pakistan (or that neck of the woods - racists tend not to necessarily be too precise in their choice of slurs).

[@nealben76]

I lived in Russia for many years, and like to think I got to know the language pretty well, including the swearing. My impression of Russian swearing is that it does seem to be a lot more powerful than English swearing is, certainly in the 21st century. It seemed to me to be used quite a lot, but perhaps more by men of all ages and more by people of both sexes in younger generations, and generally mostly in more informal situations (among friends or in the pub) than with strangers or in non-manual work situations.

[@piratejack6577]

When he says it’s not a real quote *My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined*

[@switton]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/pIfTl5-gfZpoirM

[@ecranfortessa]

No available, lol

[@arkle519]

That may not be real, but here's something real in a similar fashion that you'll definitely like: Evidently Chickentown by John Cooper Clarke. It's a poem/song where he repetitively uses fuck, there's also another version where he uses bloody instead. Givet a geek, you'll like it.

[@glaceRaven]

It's close to the original, at least, it's more paraphrased than fictional. (it's a great film by the way, highly recommend it)

[@patrikhjorth3291]

Please allow me to entertain you with this rendition of that particular part of the film: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKKah51pfLKXZ68

[@chemicaltwin]

Here where I am located in the South-Eastern United States - It is still frowned upon for a man to swear in front of a lady.

[@torontoMMVI]

My favorite from the 1930s is Bing Crosby on a hot mic in a recording studio saying "now that don't mean a f**k to me..." in that sonorous baritone of his.

[@eachannmacrae8236]

No swearing in Scotland especially highlands until very recently. Swearing not really heard in highlands until 70s earlier like 20s 30s and reservedly in Glasgow. According to my granny.