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I'm having trouble finding the origin of the terms "curse words" and "swear words" when used as a synonym what many call "bad words" (although I don't agree).

I've found that "curses" when used as an explicative is from the late 19th century, but not much more than that. I'm assuming they have some origin in religion/mysticism/witchcraft due to the earliest meaning I can find of the word "curse," and how "swear" is believed to come from the invocation of the the "sacred" name (Exodus).

Unfortunately, these explanations don't satisfy me. I ask, does anyone have a more detailed explanation with specifics as to the origin of these terms in order to satisfy my curiosity?

KillingTime
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Jagid
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    Hi Jagid, welcome to ELU.Curse goes back to 13th Century OE - not much is known before that but it may be from O.Fr. curuz (anger). And swear is equally old but it meant "give a promise" rather than "use bad language", which came in around C15. Swear-word came much later, but was colloquial by 1883. What else do you want to know? – FumbleFingers Dec 31 '11 at 23:54
  • I going on the assumption that "curse words" and the original use of the word "curse" are somehow related, but I'm not sure how or why. The same would go for "swear" and "swear words" because, like you said, "swear" was originally to give a promise, how/why did it become a label for a set of words that are seen as "bad." – Jagid Jan 01 '12 at 00:02
  • Well, it's at the very least "socially indelicate" to go around invoking God or the Devil to heap misery upon someone you're having a drunken argument with. People "swear on their mother's life that they didn't fucking do it, so help me God". To most people, some or all of that is "bad". I don't see anything hard to understand about that. What is it exactly you don't get? – FumbleFingers Jan 01 '12 at 02:23

1 Answers1

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The general term is Profanity. Swearing and cursing are both activities in which profanity may occur, so that's where the common terms came from.

Swearing means swearing by someone or something, i.e, taking an oath to do something, or simply to tell the truth. The court oath in the USA is usually something like "In the testimony I am about to give, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God." Some Americans refuse to swear in court because they would have to mention God; they are usually allowed to affirm their testimony formally instead.

Cursing means to wish for evil to happen to others -- and to state this wish as if to bring it about, by calling on a god or some magical spirit. Modals like may are often used in special constructions in cursing; the profanity is usually limited to hell, damn, devil, demon, and their euphemisms like heck, darn, fallen angel, and evil spirit:

  • (May) God damn you to Hell!
  • May you tan forever in the fires of Heck!
  • Roofless and rootless, cursed be and cast out! (from P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath series)
John Lawler
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  • Well of course there's the scatalogical dimension too - when you call someone a piece of shit, for example. Not to mention sex, private parts, mucus membranes, slimy or otherwise icky life-forms, etc., etc. We can invest the power of "bad words" across a wide range of subjects. But religion certainly does give us many expressions useful for verbally beating people up. – FumbleFingers Jan 01 '12 at 02:36
  • Specifically, cursing and swearing were asked about, and they're religious. Good enough; I certainly didn't feel the need to be comprehensive and fine-grained on the subject. – John Lawler Jan 01 '12 at 02:40
  • True. One can never be comprehensive about anything, no matter how trivial and limited it might appear at first. Anyway, I have a penchant for scatology! – FumbleFingers Jan 01 '12 at 02:48
  • I used to give lectures on it; students are always fascinated. Me, I never cease to be fascinated by the oddities of pragmatics. – John Lawler Jan 01 '12 at 02:51
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    Just for correctness: some Americans refuse to swear in court because they have a religious objection to swearing, especially swearing in the name of God. – sq33G Jan 01 '12 at 09:28
  • @sq33G it bears mention that some of those people object to swearing in the name of God because they are very religious, while others object to swearing in the name of God because they are atheists. (It also bears mention that witnesses in American courts are not necessarily Americans.) – phoog Jan 04 '12 at 23:06
  • @phoog I consider atheism to be a special case of religion :) – sq33G Jan 04 '12 at 23:09
  • @FumbleFingers terms like curse, swear, and profanity all betray the religious history of these kinds of utterances. Scatological and sexual references only began to acquire this kind of taboo in the last century or two. Dutch, for example, is quite far behind English in this regard, where I (English speaker) was cautioned by natives against saying "god damned" in Dutch, but the head of the Green Party can criticize the capital's parking rules in a newspaper interview by calling it "the cunt policy whereby..." – phoog Jan 04 '12 at 23:11
  • @sq33G fair enough. Perhaps I should have said "... because they are very careful to do as God tells them" and "... because they deny God's existence" – phoog Jan 04 '12 at 23:12
  • @phoog: I simply don't believe that "taboo words" only derived from the religious domain before the last couple of centuries. Logically, the taboo against incest, for example, should certainly predate anything that could meaningfully be called "religion". I'm no paleo-linguist, obviously, but I imagine the equivalent of "motherfucker" was around long before anyone ever dreamt up the concepts of God and Hell so they could say "God damn you to Hell!". – FumbleFingers Jan 04 '12 at 23:40
  • @FumbleFingers A taboo against incest is not the same thing as a taboo against language describing incest. Note also that the concepts of god and hell far predate the words "god" and "hell", which have only been around for a couple of millennia at best. – phoog Jan 04 '12 at 23:43
  • @phoog: I did say "the concepts", not "the words". I'm assuming my position relates to the situation at least ten or hundreds of thousands of years ago. And taboos against incest, excrement, etc., effectively apply before the speciation of homo sap., since we normally find such behaviour in other species even today. I don't understand why you seem so keen to give religion such a dominant position in this issue - it's pretty peripheral to most Brits these days, but I'm sure we still "swear" just as much as our more God-fearing cousins across the pond. – FumbleFingers Jan 04 '12 at 23:52
  • @FumbleFingers I'm just trying to point out that profanity was centered on religious words in previous centuries, and that it has shifted to sexual words more recently. Note for example Steven Pinker's hypothesis on the origin of the phrase "fuck you" (not intended to be a veiled insult, I assure you!). – phoog Jan 04 '12 at 23:55
  • @phoog: I imagine "fuck" was probably around (and taboo) long before the particular usage "fuck you" came along. And that's only a matter of syntax, after all, so it's no surprise if it was modelled on the existing form "damn you". But to my mind, taboo words have always been around - it's just that during its heyday the Roman Catholic Church made so many things taboo that it could easily appear they invented the concept for all contexts, including language. – FumbleFingers Jan 05 '12 at 00:20
  • Taboo words are the healthiest words in the language, because Everybody Has To Know Them. Can't avoid it if you don't know it, after all. So they go back centuries and millennia, while euphemisms die out and become quaint after the strategy is detected. Crapper, Water Closet, WC, Toilet, Bathroom Bowl, ... – John Lawler Jan 05 '12 at 01:23
  • Incredible answer, I never thought about cursing and swearing like this...

    What about cuss words?

     – Otter Jan 22 '21 at 14:10
  • Cuss is a regional pronunciation of curse, used as a euphemism, like tarnation and darned for damnation and damned. It's just another way of saying curse words, but safer. You never know when the Spirits will come getcha after you say the magic words. – John Lawler Jan 22 '21 at 15:53