Why are swear words bad?

[newtron]

This was a question I asked my parents when I was a kid, as I could not understand how a single word could be bad.  They're just words. I could understand how a sentence would be offensive, but not just a word.  I was never able to get a good answer from them.  So I just accepted that certain words are offensive to most people.  But I am still curious, during the development of a language, how do some words become offensive to most people?

[londondave]

Most swear words are the original words used to describe something, but it was not considered proper to speak of them, so other words took their place and the original word became the swear word.

[Xollob]

Many swear words are religious in origin, for example "by Our Lady" mutated to "bloody" over time.

There's a good article on Profanity in Wikipedia.

[WaldoMcFroog]

I remember another comedian - Jerry Sadowitz - who's comedy I do find offensive, as it happens, point out that one of the key things that provides a swear word with its power is direction. I.E. 'f***' would be percieved by many as relatively banal by itself, albeit vulgar, whereas 'f*** you' (pointing the word at an individual) is undeniably offensive.

[twiglet4frog]

another comedien ...Roy Chubby Brown....taught me all my swear words as a kid lol

[Chillum]

These words have come to be accepted as being offensive within our society. Those rules were learned by our parents and passed on to us, as we will pass them on to our children. "Naughty" words or "adult language", so to speak. I find the abhoration with which the "c" word is often regarded, particularly strange. I've heard from women who claim that is an ugly portrayal of female genitalia used in an degroitary manner, which therefor makes it some kind of woman-hating word, but I think that's xollob. You never hear the eqivalent claims made against the word pr!ck, which is essentially the same thing. After all you can be a "good C" but you can never be a "good pr!ck".

[goldenboy]

I personally believe that censorship of swear words is a small step away from orwellian newspeak. To restrict words used in everyday language can result in a restriction of expressible concepts and behaviour, if that makes sense. 1984 describes the concept quite well. I dont think that swearing is an indicator of a lcak of education, I went to university and heard plenty of fruity language whilst there.

[lizzierose]

chillum perhaps that because women generally have been more sexually degraded in our british history by men than the other way around

[lizzierose]

a lot of our swear words are the original anglosaxon I think and a few others. when our ruling classes were using french and latinate terms these became acceptable and the anglo saxon equivalents spoken by the peasants became coarse. eg. pudenda (from the latin) and the afforementioned c- word, sexual intercourse and f***ing

[jno]

A book called Your Mother's Tongue (clever, that), by Stephen Burgen, studies the way swearing differs in various European languages; highly readable, not academic. ISBN 0575061316 if anyone's interested.