Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (46 page)

Other scholars have argued:
Matthew Sweet,
Inventing the Victorians
(London: Faber, 2001), 216.

He described Turner’s erotic works:
Maev Kennedy, “Infamous Bonfire of Turner’s Erotic Art Revealed to Be a Myth,”
Guardian
, December 31, 2004; Sarah Lyall, “A Censorship Story Goes up in Smoke,”
New York Times
, January 13, 2005.

“
Then owls and bats
”: Robert Browning, “Pippa Passes,” in
The Major Works
, ed. Adam Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), IV.ii.96. Browning’s “twat” has been covered in Jesse Sheidlower,
The F Word
, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), xv; Patricia O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman,
Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language
(New York: Random House, 2009), 90–91; and Peter Silverton,
Filthy English: The How, Why, When, and What of Everyday Swearing
(London: Portobello, 2009), among others.

“
Give not male names then to such things
”: Martial,
Ex Otio Negotium, or Martiall His Epigrams Translated
, trans. Robert Fletcher (London, 1656).

It appears in Thomas Wright’s:
Thomas Wright,
Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English
(London: H. G. Bohn, 1857).

And in 1888, a concerned reader:
H. W. Fay, “A Distressing Blunder,”
The Academy
, no. 841 (June 16, 1888): 415.

trousers, “an article of dress
”: quoted in Jeffrey Kacirk,
The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 98.

“
When at Niagara Falls
”: Capt. Frederick Marryat,
A Diary in America: With Remarks on Its Institutions
(New York: Wm. H. Colyer, 1839), 154.

There is scholarly debate about the number:
Sweet,
Inventing the Victorians
, xiv–xv; Karen Lystra,
Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 56–57.

“
euphemisms, words and phrases
”: Noah Webster, ed.,
The Holy Bible
(New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1833), iv.

Even John Farmer and William Henley:
“Bender,” in John Farmer and William Henley, eds.,
Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present
, 7 vols. (London, 1890–1904).

In the 1874 edition of his
Slang Dictionary: John Hotten, ed.,
Slang Dictionary
, rev. ed. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1874).

“
In the papers
”: Henry Alford,
A Plea for the Queen’s English
, rev. ed. (New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1878), 251, 248.

“
not once unsheathed
”: John Cleland,
Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
, ed. Peter Wagner (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 112–13.

“
The tree of Life
”: quoted in Alison Syme,
A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-Siècle Art
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 26; Karen Harvey,
Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 90.

Of perspiration:
quoted in
OED
.

Linguists Keith Allan and Kate Burridge:
Keith Allan and Kate Burridge,
Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 33. See especially
Chapter 2
, “Sweet Talking and Offensive Language.”

“
not even this word, it seems
”: Leigh Hunt,
The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt
(London: Smith, Elder, 1891), 376.

When an actress spoke it
: Adrian Frazier,
Playboys of the Western World: Production Histories
(Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2004), 13–16.

“
Presumptuous Piss-pot
”: “On Melting Down the Plate: Or, the Piss-pot’s Farewell,”
Poems on Affairs of State
, pt. III (London, 1698), 215.

Consider the toilet:
These euphemisms come from the
OED
; Richard W. Bailey,
Nineteenth-Century English
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); and Andreas Fischer, “‘Non Olet’: Euphemisms We Live by,”
New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics II
(Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004), 91–108.

“
The newly wedded country gent
”: quoted in Bailey,
Nineteenth-Century English
, 168.

Gardez l’eau
…
bourdalou:
Naomi Stead, “Avoidance: On Some Euphemisms for the ‘Smallest Room,’” in
Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender
, ed. Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 128.

toilet
came to indicate:
Stead, “Avoidance,” 129–30;
OED
.

Toiletgate:
John Harris, “Common People,”
Guardian
, April 16, 2007.

“
I find it almost impossible
”: Sarah Lyall, “Why Can’t the English Just Give Up That Class Folderol?”
New York Times
, April 26, 2007.

“
No freshman shall mingo
”: William Bentnick-Smith,
The Harvard Book: Selections from Three Centuries
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 162.

“
During World War I
”: Catherine O’Reilly,
Did Thomas Crapper Really Invent the Toilet? The Inventions That Changed Our Homes and Our Lives
(New York: Skyhorse, 2008), xii; personal communication, Simon Kirby.

A. J. Splatt and D. Weedon:
“Nominative Determinism,”
Wikipedia
, June 30, 2012, accessed July 29, 2012.

“
Excretion was an accepted and semipublic event
”: quoted in Fischer, “‘Non Olet,’” 105.

“
the transition from a society of estates or orders
”: Suzanne Romaine, ed.,
The Cambridge History of the English Language
, vol. IV:
1776–1997
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13.

For more about this great social transition, see T. C. W. Blanning,
The Oxford History of Modern Europe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

“
The middle class… sought an identity
”: McEnery,
Swearing in English
, 84.

“
How shamefully rich
”: Richard Chenevix Trench,
On the Study of Words
, 2nd ed. (New York: Blakeman & Mason, 1859), 40.

“
purity of speech, like personal cleanliness
”: George Perkins Marsh,
Lectures on the English Language
(New York: Scribner, 1860), 645.

“
Few things are in worse taste
”: Alfred Ayers,
The Verbalist
, rev. ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 103–4.

“
evidence of hypercorrection
”: McEnery,
Swearing in English
, 49.

“
in good sooth
”: William Shakespeare,
Henry IV, Part One
, Act III, scene i.

“
the great Australian adjective
”: Geoffrey Hughes,
Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 171.

“
is often classed as profane or obscene
”: Thomas H. B. Graham, “Some English Expletives,”
Gentleman’s Magazine
, July-December 1891, 199.

“
a few seconds of stunned disbelieving silence
”: Geoffrey Hughes,
An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World
(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 372.

“
not pygmalion likely
”: Ibid., 392.

“
an epithet difficult to define
”: “Bloody,” in Farmer and Henley, eds.,
Slang and Its Analogues
.

“
We cannot disguise to ourselves
”: Julian Sharman,
A Cursory History of Swearing
(London: Nimmo and Bain, 1884), 178.

“
God damn him
”: A Collection of State-Trials and Proceedings (London: Benj. Motte and C. Bathurst, 1735), 7:349.

“
get thee gone
”: Rabelais,
Gargantua and Pantagruel
, trans. Thomas Urquhart, ed. Charles Whibley (London: David Nutt, 1900), 135.

“
B—st [blast] and b-gg-r
”: “Bugger,”
OED
.

“
Damn ’em bugger you
”: Jacob A. Hazen,
Five Years Before the Mast, or, Life in the Forecastle
(Philadelphia: G. G. Evans, 1854), 254.

“
Take the bugger off
”: William G. Shaw, “State v. McDonnell,”
Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Vermont
, vol. 32, new series, vol. 3 (Rutland: Geo. A Tuttle, 1861), 495.

“
Previous to this the soil had
”: Henry Lamson Boies,
History of De Kalb County, Illinois
(Chicago: O. P. Bassett, 1868), 391.

“
came out and met him”
: Journal of the Senate of Ohio, at the First Session of the Thirty-Ninth General Assembly (Columbus: Samuel Medary, 1840), 529.

a low-class prostitute with whom
: My Secret Life (Amsterdam, 1888), 2:256.

“
a term of contempt
”: Frederick Thomas Elworthy,
The West Somerset Word-Book
(London: Trübner, 1886), 663.

the “feminization of ambisexual terms
”: Hughes,
Swearing
, 220–23.

“
G—d—your books
”: Sheidlower,
The F Word
, 73; Hughes,
Encyclopedia
, xxii.

“
For all your threats
”: Sheidlower,
The F Word
, 73; Henry Spencer Ashbee,
Catena Librorum Tacendorum, by Pisanus Fraxi
(London, 1885), 319–21.

one Mr. Baker had told him
: Sheidlower,
The F Word
, 89–90.

In 1836 Mary Hamilton:
Joy Damousi,
Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 75.

An 1857 abolitionist work:
Sheidlower,
The F Word
, 140;
The Suppressed Book About Slavery!
(New York: Carleton, 1864), 211.