Minced oath

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A minced oath, also known as a pseudo-profanity, is an expression based on a profanity which has been altered to reduce or remove the disagreeable or objectionable characteristics of the original expression; for example, "gosh" used instead of "God", "darn" instead of "damn", "heck" instead of "hell", and "freaking" instead of "fucking". Nearly all profanities have minced variants; the words that are most taboo give rise to the most.[1]

Contents

[edit] Formation

The most common methods of forming a minced oath are rhyme and alliteration. Thus the word bloody can become blooming, bleeding, or ruddy.[1] In Cockney rhyming slang, rhyming euphemisms are sometimes truncated so that the rhyme is eliminated: prick became Hampton Wick and then simply Hampton. (The phrase flashing his Hampton, in turn, led to the use of the word flasher for an exhibitionist.)[2]

Minced oaths can also be formed by shortening: b for bloody, eff for fuck.[1] Sometimes words borrowed from other languages become minced oaths; for example, poppycock comes from the Low Dutch pappe kak, meaning "soft dung".[2] The use of French foutre for fuck dates to 1592; later forms include foot (1600s) and footer (1753).[3]

The minced oath blank is an ironic reference to the dashes that were sometimes used to replace profanities in print.[4] It goes back at least to 1854, when Cuthbert Bede wrote "I wouldn't give a blank for such a blank blank. I'm blank, if he doesn't look as if he'd swallowed a blank codfish." By the 1880s, it had given rise to the derived forms blanked and blankety.[5] In the same way, bleep arose from the use of a tone to mask profanities on radio.[4]

Adjectival probably first became current around 1910, though in 1851 Charles Dickens wrote:

Bark's parts of speech are of an awful sort -- principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark, have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective premises! I won't, by adjective and substantive!... Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers![6]

[edit] History

The Cretan king Rhadamanthus is said to have forbidden his subjects to swear by the gods, suggesting that they swear instead by the ram, the goose, or the plane tree. Socrates favored the "Rhadamanthine" oath "by the dog". Aristophanes mentions that people used to swear by the birds instead of by the gods, adding that the soothsayer Lampon still swears by the goose "whenever he's going to cheat you".[7] Since no real god was called upon, Lampon may have considered this oath safe to break.[8]

The use of minced oaths in English dates back at least to the 14th century, when "gog" and "kokk", both euphemisms for God, were in use. Other early minced oaths include "Gis" or "Jis" for Jesus (1528).[3]

Late Elizabethan drama contains a profusion of minced oaths, probably due to Puritan opposition to swearing. Seven new minced oaths are first recorded between 1598 and 1602, including 'sblood for God's blood from Shakespeare, 'slight for God's light from Ben Jonson, and 'snails for God's nails from the historian John Hayward. Swearing on stage was officially banned by the Act to Restraine Abuses of Players in 1606, and a general ban on swearing followed in 1623. In some cases the original meanings of these minced oaths were forgotten; 'struth (God's truth) came to be spelled 'strewth and zounds changed pronunciation so that it no longer sounded like God's wounds.[9] Other examples from this period include 'slid for "God's eyelid" (1598) and sfoot for "God's foot" (1602). Gadzooks, for "God's hooks" (the nails on Christ's cross), followed in the 1650s, and odsbodikins, for "God's little body", in 1709.[10]

[edit] Acceptability

Although minced oaths are not as strong as the expressions from which they derive, some still find them offensive. One writer in 1550 considered "idle oaths" like "by cocke" (by God), "by the cross of the mouse foot", and "by Saint Chicken" to be "most abominable blasphemy".[11] The minced oaths "'sblood" and "zounds" were omitted from the Folio edition of Shakespeare's play Othello, probably due to Puritan-influenced censorship.[12] In 1941 a U.S. federal judge threatened a lawyer with contempt of court for using the word "darn".[13] Zounds may sound amusing and archaic to the modern ear,[14] yet as late as 1984 a writer recalled that "some years ago", after using it in print, he had received complaints that it was blasphemous because of its origin as "God's wounds".[15] Bart Simpson from the The Simpsons introduced the minced oath, "¡Ay, caramba! (pronounced [ˈai | ka.ˈɾam.ba]) from the Spanish interjection ¡ay! (denoting surprise or pain) and caramba (for carajo). This Mexican minced oath had fallen into such disuse, that many Spanish speakers (and teachers) assumed it was an invention of Matt Groening. Ironically, The Simpsons show has re-introduced the word into Spanish vocabulary.[citation needed]

[edit] Minced oaths in fiction

Writers of fiction sometimes face the problem of portraying characters who swear without offending audiences or incurring censorship. Somerset Maugham directly referred to this problem in his 1919 novel The Moon and Sixpence, where he admitted:

Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, did not use exactly the words I have given, but since this book is meant for family reading, I thought it better -- at the expense of truth -- to put into his mouth language familiar to the domestic circle.[16]

In particular, authors of children's fiction sometimes put minced oaths into the mouths of characters who swear a lot, as a way of depicting a part of their behaviour that it would be unconvincing not to represent, but also avoiding the use of swear words which would be considered unsuitable for children to read. In some cases, minced oaths are used which it seems very unlikely people would actually use in real life; examples include "blessed", "By Jove",[citation needed] "golly"[citation needed] or "gosh", "gee", "dagnabit"[citation needed] and "goldarn it".[citation needed]

[edit] Other instances

Online, alternative typographical glyphs are sometimes used to evade profanity filters (such as $hit instead of shit, @ss or @rse instead of ass or arse).[citation needed] "fsck", from "filesystem check", is commonly used on Usenet and in other technology-related circles.[17]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Hughes, 12.
  2. ^ a b Hughes, 16-17.
  3. ^ a b Hughes, 13-15.
  4. ^ a b Hughes, 18-19.
  5. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, entry for blank, definition 12b.
  6. ^ Charles, Dickens (1851). "On Duty with Inspector Field". Household Words: 151-152. Retrieved on 2007-12-19.
  7. ^ Echols, Edward C. (1951). "The Art of Classical Swearing". The Classical Journal 46 (6): 291-298. Retrieved on 2007-02-15.
  8. ^ Dillon, Matthew (1995). "By Gods, Tongues, and Dogs: The Use of Oaths in Aristophanic Comedy". Greece & Rome, 2nd Ser. 42 (2): 135-151. Retrieved on 2007-02-15.
  9. ^ Hughes, 103-105.
  10. ^ Hughes, 13.
  11. ^ Lund, J.M. (2002). "The Ordeal of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy: The Conflict Over Profane Swearing and the Puritan Culture of Discipline". Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 25 (3/4): 260-269.
  12. ^ Kermode, Frank (2001). Shakespeare's Language. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 166. ISBN 0-374-52774-1. 
  13. ^ Montagu, Ashely (2001). The Anatomy of Swearing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 298. 0-812-21764-0. 
  14. ^ Leland, Christopher T. (2002). Creative Writer's Style Guide: Rules and Advice for Writing Fiction and Creative Nonfiction. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books, 207. ISBN 1-884-91055-6. 
  15. ^ Kilpatrick, James J. (1984). The Writer's Art. Fairway, Kansas: Andrews McNeel Publishing, 83. ISBN 0-836-27925-5. 
  16. ^ Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, ch. 47; quoted in Hughes, 187.
  17. ^ http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/fscking.html

[edit] References

  • Dickens, Charles (1999). Reprinted Pieces by Charles Dickens. Hazelton, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 150. 
  • Hughes, Geoffrey (1991). Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-16593-2. 
  • Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (CD-ROM) (1994).

[edit] See also

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