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A profanity (or bad word, swear word, curse word, cuss word, dirty word, or collectively foul, bad or strong language) under current colloquial use is a word, expression, gesture, or other usage which is socially constructed as insulting, rude or vulgar. The extent to which a profanity is considered to be in some way disagreeable or objectionable depends on context, timing and various other factors. However, the use of certain profanities at certain times, especially in a public setting or during a solemn occasion, may always be considered inappropriate or in bad taste, if not outright abusive, obscene or offensive. At other times the use of certain profanities will be considered mild or acceptable, and may take less recognizable forms, such as a minced oath.

The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or saying the Lord's name in vain. Profanity represented a secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, and is known to be sinful. However, the term has been extended to include expressions with scatological, sexist, derogatory, racist, or sexual themes. Compare the concept of the four-letter word. The more vague and inclusive interpretation blurs the distinction between categories of offensive words (see Cursing in America by Timothy Jay ).

The use and meaning of profanity is culturally and linguistically specific. For example, many profanities in Canadian French are a corruption of religious terminology, while many English obscenities tend to reference sexuality. A term which functions as a profanity in one language may often lack any profane quality when translated into another language.

US obscenity laws were originally meant to prohibit attacks on religion and religious figures or to protect children from profane speech. Since the time of the Civil War in the late 1800s, restrictions have focused more on sexual speech. There has always been great difficulty in defining profanity. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, in response to complaints about a 1973 broadcast comedy routine by George Carlin, called: Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television, ruled that such language could not be broadcast at times of day when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld this act of censorship in F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978). Despite this definition, people of every ethnicity, class and level of education swear. 72-percent of American men and 58-percent of American women swear in public ^{[citation needed]}, and 61-percent of adolescents and 89-percent of adults swear in public. Most researchers consider these numbers to be in line with other populations worldwide.

History

Terms of profanity have historically been taboo words. Some words that were originally considered profane have become much less offensive with the increasing secularity of society. Others, primarily racial or ethnic epithets which can be considered part of hate speech.

William Shakespeare hinted at the word cunt in Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Henry V: Hamlet quips about "country matters" when he tries to lay his head in Ophelia's lap; Malvolio has the salacious line "These be her very c's, her u's, and her t's, and thus she makes her great p's"; and the French Princess Katherine is amused by the word gown for its similarity to the French con. Interestingly, the word "cunt," while retaining its original meaning in America, has changed in meaning somewhat in Great Britain in the past thirty years. Where American usage of the word exclusively refers to either female anatomy or (in extreme cases) an ill-tempered woman, "cunt" in the UK has attained the status of a gender-neutral insult, akin to asshole etc.

In the U.S. today, terminology considered to be racist is often seen as more offensive than sexual or scatological terminology; this is most clearly shown in the attention given to use of the word nigger, now effectively banned in American public discourse, although many African Americans use the word "nigga" as a casual reference, more than most whites do in their normal conversations (though in certain racist or racially-biased social groups, "nigger" as a casual reference to black people is still in frequent use). So strong is the social disapproval aimed at this word, that it has affected use of the unrelated, but similar-sounding, word niggardly (meaning "stingy"). For example, in a highly publicized incident in 1999, the mayor of Washington, DC, Anthony A. Williams, pressed for the resignation of his staff member, David Howard, because Howard used the word "niggardly" in a private staff meeting [1]. As with other types of profanity, context is very important; thus, Americans of African descent might use the word nigger, or the related nigga, in informal situations among themselves, without being considered offensive.

The "new taboos" on disparaging words (see hate speech) now seen as more profane or obscene, because that word/term was created to insult, offend or held against a racial, religious and cultural group (see pejorative terms), but recent trands are seen by some as evidence that reclaiming of words such as queer and bitch by the communities they are intended to insult may be a valid way to remove their power. See also the article on nigger. Other ethnic slurs like "chink", "spic", "wop(s)", "kraut", "beaner" and "polack"; and pejoratives like "fattie", "cripple", "retard", "illegal alien", "Muslim terrorist" and "redneck" aren't entirely profane to a society, but can be fighting words when applied in the company of certain people, and not socially accepted in polite settings or social situations. Psycholinguistic studies have demonstrated that profanity and other taboo words produce physical effects in people who read or hear them, such as an elevated heart rate.

The offensiveness or perceived intensity or vulgarity of the various profanities can change over time, with certain words becoming more or less offensive as time goes on. For example, in modern times the word piss is usually considered mildly vulgar and somewhat impolite, whereas the King James Bible unblushingly employs it where modern translators would prefer the word urine (2 Kings 18:27; Isa 36:12) or urinate (1 Sam 25:22, 25:34; 1 Kings 14:10, 16:11, 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8). The word cunt has seen a similar evolution; its ancestor ("queynte") was not considered vulgar at all, but the word is now considered among the most offensive words in the English language.

Severity

The relative severity of the various British profanities, as perceived by the public, was studied on behalf of the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority; the results of this jointly commissioned research were published in December 2000 in a paper called "Delete Expletives". It listed the profanities in order of severity, the top ten being cunt, motherfucker, fuck, wanker, nigger, bastard, prick, bollocks, arsehole, and paki, in that order. 83% of respondents regarded cunt as "very severe"; 16% thought the same about shit and 10% crap. Only about 1% thought cunt was "not swearing"; 9% thought the same about shit and 32% crap.

It is notable that there is a significant difference between the US and Britain in this regard: wanker is relatively unknown as a swearword, bollocks (in the variant bollixed) is unexceptional, and paki is entirely foreign. The first two words feature on occasion on primetime US TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Interlanguage

The situation is rendered even more complex when other languages enter the picture. Merde in French, and Mist in German (both usually translated as shit) are also quite common, as well as Italian Merda or Spanish Mierda. While German and other languages' profanity seems to focus on elimination, English profanity tends to be sexual in nature. Italian represents an exception here, due to the massive use of Cazzo and Fica (translated as dick and cunt, with the latter being less insulting than English) in common speech; both are very common in the Italian language and both have, for the most part, lost their vulgar meaning. Likewise, in European Spanish, coño (usually translated as cunt in English) is very common in informal spoken discourse, meaning no more than "Hey!"

Some scholars have noted that while the French and Spanish are comfortable hearing native speakers use these words, they tend to hear the "stronger" meaning when the same words are spoken by non-native speakers. This may be similar to the differences in the acceptability of queer or nigger depending on who is saying the words. Or it may be an example of how it is easier to learn swear words in a new language or dialect than to learn the fine shades of intensity which accompany their use.

A profane word in one language often sounds like an ordinary word in another. Fuck sounds like the French words for seal (phoque) and jib (foc), the Spanish words for seal (foca) and lightbulb (foco) or the Irish word for words (focail), as well as the Romanian word for do (I do can be fac eu, which sounds a lot like the English fuck you). Also, Croatian phrase fakat sounds similar to English "fuck at" when it actually means "really". 'Fuck' also sounds like the Latin imperative singular form of "do" or "make" ("fac"), the Swedish word for union (fack) and the Dutch word for " trade" or "pigeon hole" (vak) ; shit sounds somewhat like the Russian for "shield" (щит). The Cantonese words for "flower" and "bridge" when said together ("fa kyu") sounds vaguely similar to "fuck you," as does the Latin word for "I do" ("facio"). Also, the Latin singular imperative of "say" ("dic") and the Dutch word for " fat" ("dik") are pronounced like the English "dick". The German word for "fat" is both spelt and pronounced as the word "dick" in English. Even names in one language may appear as vulgar words in another linguistic community, which causes many immigrants to change their names (common Vietnamese personal names include Phuc and Bich; a fairly common Thai name is Porn.). A particular coincidence is the Hungarian and Spanish and Italian words for curve: Spanish curva sounds like a Slavic, Romanian and Hungarian kurva meaning "prostitute" (or, more offensively, "whore"), and Hungarian kanyar sounds like coño, mentioned above. See another example in Laputa. Additionally, puta is genitive and accusative case of two often used words in south Slavic languages; but in Portuguese and Spanish, means "whore", and filho da puta (Spanish: hijo de puta) is an offensive word, similar to son of a bitch. In Finnish, katso merta means look at the sea, but to Italophones it sounds very similar to cazzo merda; cazzo is the English equivalent of cock or dick, and merda means shit. While cazzo merda does not make much sense grammatically (they are just two nouns put one after the other), hearing such a thing would be funny for Italians, to say the least. Even more for Spaniards, since the same sentence, katso merta, sounds just like the offensive expression cacho mierda (piece of shit) in Spanish. The Spanish word puse (the first-person past-tense of to put) sounds similar to the English profanity pussy. This is often a source of discomfort for Spanish teachers and humor for Spanish students when the conjugation is being taught. Also the Japanese word mai asa meaning every morning sounds like the English phrase my ass, and is often found humourous for students studying Japanese. "Super white" in Mandarin, chao ji bai, sounds like Teochew "smelly cunt".

In at least one case in Spanish, one word with one connotation in the native language of one of its colonies (in this case, the Philippines) was adopted with another profane connotation in Spanish. The Tagalog word pinga (which means a pole, particularly the one used as a whip to strike or otherwise drive a stray horse into walking on a straight line) is regarded as an equivalent of dick in some Spanish countries, particularly Cuba and Puerto Rico. Yet the word pinga in Portuguese is the slang name for Cachaça, a Brazilian alcoholic beverage.

Canadian French can string a few basic terms from Roman Catholic liturgy into quite impressive strings of invective of up to a minute or more. This is known as sacre.

The German interjection for surprise or admiration Hui! sounds completely like the Russian and Polish swear word and equivalent to cock (Polish chuj, Russian khuj).

Hungarian "juh-síp", relating to a shepherd using a whistle to keep the flock together, sounds like English "you sheep". This was used as a gag in the Hungarian cartoon "Gum Family".

A more exotic example of interlanguage profanity is the English word "Carry" which sounds exactly the same as the Sinhala (Spoken in Sri Lanka) profanity for semen.

Profanity in other languages

For an extensive treatment of profanity (or obscene/vulgar words or topics) in languages other than English, including many lists of examples are either forbidden and taboo in that culture, see Foreign profanity.

For reasons of differing cultural, linguistic and historical backgrounds, the profanities of different languages place emphasis on different subject matter. For more detail, see Foreign profanity. In briefest summary, here is a list showing main differences or emphasis for some common languages:

English: sex, excrement, homosexuality, incest, increasingly bigotry and prejudice.
French: sex, excrement, religion, racial/ethnic hatred.
German: Equating people with animals, (i.e., Schweinehunde), sex, excrement, bigotry/prejudice.
Norwegian: Predominantly religion/blasphemy in the south, but more genitals and sexual acts with animals further north in the country
Russian: sex and foul language, but pre-Communist era morality taboos on religion, excrement and disrespect to authority made a comeback after 1991.
Polish: sex (especially impotence), excrement, comparing people to animals
Spanish: sex, incest, homosexuality, gender identity.
Portuguese: sex, homosexuality, gender identity.
Dutch: diseases, self-damnation and blasphemy.
Irish: religion (damnation, blasphemy), some sexual terms, and some excrement
Scots Gaelic: sex, excrement, religion, English-Scottish tensions
Welsh: sex, excrement, English-Welsh tensions
Japanese: violations of politeness protocols.
Korean: Impolite responses to people, esp. family and authority, references to animals, sexual terms
Chinese: sex, insults to family members
Italian: blasphemy, some sexual terms, personal insults (i.e. "your mother").
Arabic: sacrilege/blasphemy, excrement, sex (very defined in Saudi Arabia), homosexuality, gender identity, and even the word "wife" is considered profane/obscene, in Arab and Islamic polite society you never ask about how the "wife" is, and for more liberal Arabs, they substitute terms for "wife" in non-intimate ways to avoid this proverbial taboo, in part of the Middle East's puritanical modesty in the Muslim religion. ^{[citation needed]}
Tagalog: sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, incest, political insults.
Indo-Aryan languages: insults to family members, esp. incest
Dravidian languages: equating people with animals

SMELLY CUNT IS A AWSOME COME BACK I AM GOING TO CALL SOMEONE A SMELLY CUNT TOMMORROW

Books containing famous uses of profanity

Ulysses by James Joyce features a famous early literary use of the word "fuck". A 1967 film adaptation was banned in Ireland for decades, among other reasons because it used the term.
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger featured an early use of fuck you.

Movies and television shows notorious for profanity

Footnotes

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@@ Line 50: / Line 50: @@
 A more exotic example of interlanguage profanity is the English word "Carry" which sounds exactly the same as the [[Sinhalese language|Sinhala]] (Spoken in [[Sri Lanka]]) profanity for semen.
-i'M BLACK YOU CRAZY ASS HOLES HEY JOE MONTANA=A WAS A QUARTERBACK
 ==Profanity in other languages==