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

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

to imply that they can be summed up by the attributes of that organ, which most people would consider insulting

That would certainly be important if I'm considering primarily the effect on the insultee. But my point is that it's intellectually dissatisfying to just partake in this as a convention, when I don't myself feel that there's anything "really" insulting about such a comparison.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Aah, well that being the case, I would just refer you to the last paragraph of what I wrote. One can spend a long while coming up with creative and imaginative insults, and indeed exclamations, whether they involve conventional swearing or not.

I did try using "France" as a general purpose curse at one time, inspired only slightly by Douglas Adams' use of "Belgium" in the same way, but it never really stuck. I think because a fricative leading to a sibilant did not have a really satisfying feel to it, as an exclamation.