I solemnly swear...

[undyingking]

I'm trying to do something to sort out my swearing. Not whether I do too much of it or not -- that's a subject for another day, and for the disapproving parents of any children who might be listening. But I'm concerned that most of my swearing doesn't really make sense. Can you help? Things I feel I should exclude:

• Parts of the body -- what's insulting about calling someone after a part of the body? We've all got one (or, more often, about half of us have got one). Some of the parts commonly so used are actually among my favourites, and even the others are very usefully functional. So I think to implicitly malign them in such comparisons is nonsensical. Likewise normal bodily functions and waste products.


• Sexual practices -- whether or not I indulge in, or even approve of them, myself, I don't think it makes sense to impute specific sexual practices to the insultee. Outside the world of swearing I wouldn't dream of judging someone on the basis of their sexual preferences, so how can it work as an insult?


• Suggesting their parents weren't married -- really now, we're living in the 21st century guys. This is true of half the kids I know, and nothing wrong with that.


• Blasphemy -- generating invective via terms associated with religious belief makes no sense if you're a believer yourself, and even less if you're not.


• Euphemisms associated with any of the above -- should also be excluded, for the obvious reason.

That doesn't seem to leave much! Any ideas?

[Poll #1359991]

Comments

[triskellian]

I am intermittently, and with varying commitment, trying to do the same kind of thing, although my list of deprecated categories isn't as long as yours: blasphemy, bodily waste and common-or-garden fucking are currently still permitted searching grounds for swearwords chez triskellian. But then, most of my swearing is emphasis or exclamation rather than insult.

I like Battlestar Galactica's "frak", and other things like "melon farmer" which look a bit like ordinary swearwords, but the link back to the original is still too strong for me to be entirely happy with them.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, they fall into the category of 'replacement swearing' which I shall post about shortly.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I like Battlestar Galactica's "frak", and other things like "melon farmer"

Yarbles to that.