I recently heard a story about a little girl who’d express her indignation at having her hair braided every morning by mumbling incomprehensible words. Took her mother a while to figure out the kid was using half words to swear at her - saying ‘pid’ instead of stupid or ‘tard’ instead of retarded.
I don’t know any decent family where children are allowed swear words, even if the parents do use a lot of expletives. It’s called giving the kids a good education. It also leaves children feeling powerless. A young girl has to suffer all the hair pulling required to make her presentable for school. There’s no arguing about that. The only thing she can do is vent her anger in code.
Image by Michal Renčo from Pixabay
I think the primary function of using four-letter words is venting anger or frustration. It doesn’t help the situation in any way, but it does feel good calling your boss a son of bitch. When he’s not within earshot, that is. Just like the long-haired little girl, you cannot argue with the boss setting an impossible deadline so you resort to name calling. Many people would not approve of bad language on principle, but at least it’s liberating. By saying what you think out loud, the universe knows how you feel. It’s out in the open so it’s no longer festering in your heart.
It’s common for grown-ups to express shock when they hear a bunch of kids using a torrent of swear words when none of their parents is around. In the park, for instance, you may witness school-age children casually exchanging Fuck yous and much worse. One might think it’s the thrill of using forbidden words, especially those vaguely sexual. One might also say the kids are simply imitating their parents' bad manners. I think it’s more than that. It’s empowering for kids to express anger in no uncertain terms. Just like us, kids have plenty of anger issues.
When words become weapons
In Romanian, swearing at someone is called “a injura”, coming from the Latin word ‘injuriare”, closely related to injure. When you say something bad about someone you injure them somehow, you do them harm.
In English it’s even more obvious - to curse is short for putting a curse on someone. That’s quite brutal, isn’t it? Yes, we’re all educated people and we don’t believe in actually putting a curse on someone, but deep down a slightly more primitive human does. To the primitive steeped in rituals invoking supernatural forces, words have power and can do a lot of damage.
Also, people my age were brought up in a world where someone casting the evil eye on you was a real concern. You could counter that by spitting three times or making the sound of spitting. As for knocking on wood, I still do that occasionally.
One of my favorite scenes in the highly-acclaimed TV show “Rome” is when Servilia puts a curse on her former lover, Julius Caesar.
“Gods of the Junii, with this offering I ask you to summon Tyche, Megaera and Nemesis, so that they witness this curse. By the spirits of my ancestors, I curse Gaius Julius Caesar. Let his penis wither. Let his bones crack. Let him see his legions drown in their own blood. Gods of the inferno, I offer to you his limbs, his head, his mouth, his breath, his speech, his hands, his liver, his heart, his stomach. Gods of the inferno, let me see him suffer deeply, and I will rejoice and sacrifice to you.”
Since Caesar was murdered not long after, the curse worked, didn’t it?
One interesting thing I’ve noted about myself is how quick I resort to old curse phrases when I’m really angry.
A driver who won’t slow down at the curve near my building is a pretty common thing so I will express my anger with a cursory “Fuck you”. Probably a Romanian juicy equivalent, that involves sending the offending driver back to their mother’s cunt, if you’ll excuse my language. Using the language of your ancestors makes the insult more potent. However, that with the driver or random assholes you might run into is an everyday situation, which doesn’t elicit a strong response.
I will always remember 'Spartacus' for its most delightful and abundant curses :) I had this one stored on my phone, if you must know.
If I’m really angry, though, I will dig deeper in our popular wisdom, reaching for curse phrases that seem tried and tested. If they’re old, they must be more powerful. It’s also funny sometimes as you think of some old phrase that has no meaning to your modern ears.
It’s quite interesting to see how much popular wisdom lies there dormant, ready to be used as needed. In Jungian terms, that would be reaching into the cultural unconscious which stores feelings and knowledge specific to the culture you were born in. Whatever situation you find yourself in, your ancestors have been there before you and know exactly how to deal with it.
Just say these words and they’ll take care of your problem.
Different situations call for different swear words. If you’re just pissed at someone - in traffic, for instance, you might reach for something with sexual connotations. I’m sorry that most of you here don’t know my language as we’re extremely creative when it comes to fucking your opponents whole family, dead or alive, in the most bizarre ways.
Kick it up a notch and, like Servilia, one would invoke God, the Blessed Virgin or the Devil to smite or destroy your adversary. We have a high percentage of Orthodox Christians in this country, but nobody has a problem calling on the Virgin to turn an enemy to dust. I believe this is a relic of our pagan past when the gods were less squeamish about getting their hands dirty and you could rely on them to get the justice you seek.
Where do you stand on swearing and four-letter words? How do you express your anger?