Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (47 page)

“
Shit, that’t nothen
”: Congressional Serial Set: The Miscellaneous Documents of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Fiftieth Congress, 18 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1889), 299.

In 1894, a New York man murdered:
“New York v. Thomas Kerrigan,”
Court of Appeals
(New York: Evening Post Job Printing House, 1894). “
the ‘bad language’ of the present day:
Graham, “Some English Expletives,” 199.

The entry on
swearing:
Chambers’s Encyclopædia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge
, vol. 10 (London: William and Robert Chambers, 1892). This entry is in contrast to those of earlier editions of the
Encyclopaedia
, where swearing was characterized only as profane use of religious oaths.

“
We say that it is no worse
”: “The Obscenity Spook,”
Liberty
, vol. IV, no. 26 (July 30, 1887).

Gordon Williams argues persuasively:
Gordon Williams,
A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature
, 3 vols. (London: Athlone Press, 1994), 350.

“
a velvet salute”
: Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies: Sex in the City n Georgian Britain, ed. Hallie Rubenhold (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2005), 156.

There were many vulgar slang words:
Many of these come from Farmer and Henley,
Slang and Its Analogues
, under “prick.”

Mrs. B-ooks: Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies
, 90–91.

Betsy Miles
: Ibid., 154.

When the
List
describes:
Ibid., 127.

Tit
as a variant of
teat
: Thomas Wright,
Anglo-Saxon and English Vocabularies
, ed. Richard Paul Wülcker, 2nd ed. (London: Trübner, 1884), 1:159.

“
a dictionary by which the pronunciation
”: Samuel Johnson, “The Plan of an English Dictionary,”
The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D
. (London: F. C. and J. Rivington et al., 1823), 10:28.

“
As an independent nation
”: Noah Webster,
Dissertations on the English Language
(Boston: Isaiah Thomas, 1789), 20.

“
comparatively few terms of abuse
”: Hughes,
Swearing
, 135.

Abusive terms for other:
These racial and ethnic slurs come from Farmer and Henley,
Slang and Its Analogues
; the
OED
; and Irving Lewis Allen,
The Language of Ethinic Conflict: Social Organization and Lexical Culture
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

Chapter 6

Some scholars have argued:
Geoffrey Hughes,
Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 199; 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), 439, 486; Ruth Wajnryb,
Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language
(New York: Free Press, 2005), 141.

soldiers used
fucking
so often:
John Brophy and Eric Partridge, eds.,
Songs and Slang of the British Soldier: 1914–1918
(London: Eric Partridge at the Scholartis Press, 1930), 16.

“
It became so common
”: Ibid., 17.

“are ugly, in form and in sound”: Ibid., 15.

“’
Oo’s the bloody shit
”: Frederic Manning,
The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre
(Minneapolis: Filiquarian, 2007), 309.

“
Sir, he called me
”: Robert Graves,
Goodbye to All That: And Other Great War Writings
, ed. Steven Trout (Manchester: Carcanet, 2008), 66.

“
So you’re the young man
”: Hughes,
Encyclopedia
, “Soldiers and Sailors.” This story is possibly apocryphal, as the line has also been attributed to Dorothy Parker.

though he had to cut his:
Jesse Sheidlower,
The F Word
, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), xxii.

In 1928 Allen Walker Read:
Allen Walker Read,
Classic American Graffiti: Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America
(Waukesha, WI: Maledicta, 1977), 55, 51, 45.

“
Fuck ’Em All
”: Les Cleveland, “Soldiers’ Songs: The Folklore of the Powerless,” The Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project (online), accessed July 31, 2012.

“
the floodgates opened
”: Hughes,
Swearing
, 200.

“
a change of emphasis
”: Tony McEnery,
Swearing in English: Bad Language, Purity and Power from 1586 to the Present
(London: Routledge 2006), 121.

his groundbreaking article:
Allen Walker Read, “An Obscenity Symbol,”
American Speech
9, no. 4 (1934): 264–78.

“
the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest
”: quoted in Randall Kennedy,
Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
(New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 23.

“
probably the most offensive word
”: “Nigger,” Dictionary.com, accessed July 30, 2012.

The real, less well-known scandal:
Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons,
The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code
, rev. ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 98–108; Kennedy,
Nigger
, 90; “The Depiction of African-Americans in David Selznick’s ‘Gone with the Wind,’” American Studies at the University of Virginia (online), accessed July 30, 2012; Leonard J. Leff, “
Gone with the Wind
and Hollywood’s Racial Politics,”
Atlantic
, December 1999.

The 1930 Motion Picture Production Code:
“Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (The Hays Code),” ed. Matt Bynum,
ArtsReformation.com
, accessed July 31, 2012. The code was amended shortly before the film’s release in 1939 to discourage but not forbid the use of racial slurs, including
nigger
. See “The Production Code of the Motion Picture Industry (1930–1967),” ed. David P. Hayes,
http://productioncode.dhwritings.com/multipleframes_productioncode.php
, accessed July 31, 2012.

a genteel elderly white woman:
Lynne Tirrell, “Derogatory Terms: Racism, Sexism, and the Inferential Role Theory of Meaning,” in
Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language
, ed. Christina Hendricks and Kelly Oliver (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 45.

David Howard:
Kennedy,
Nigger
, 94–96.

The fighting-words doctrine: Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire
, 315 U.S. 568; 62 S. Ct. 766; 86 L. Ed. 1031 (1942).

Connie Watkins screamed: Watkins v. State
, 2010 Ark. App. 85 (2010).

When a police officer asked
: Kaylor v. Rankin, 356 F.Supp.2d 839 (2005).

In Michigan, Thomas Leonard
: Leonard v. Robinson, 477 F.3d 347 (2007).

Whore, harlot,
and
jezebel
:
State v. Ovadal
, 2004 WI 20; 269 Wis. 2d 200; 675 N.W.2d 806 (2004).

Jerry Spivey:
Kennedy,
Nigger
, 52–57; In re
Jerry Spivey, District Attorney
345 N.C. 404; 480 S.E.2d 693 (1997).

The North Dakota supreme court
: In the Interest of A.R., a Child v. R., a Minor Child, 2010 ND 84; 781 N.W.2d 644 (2010).

an appeals court in Arizona:
In re
John M
., 201 Ariz. 424; 36 P.3d 772 (2001).

The
n-
word does not always fit: People v. Livio
, 187 Misc. 2d 302; 725 N.Y.S.2d 785 (2000).

The other key case: Cohen v. California
, 403 U.S. 15; 91 S. Ct. 1780; 29 L. Ed. 2d 284 (1971).

The situation is different in Britain
: See Public Order Act 1986, c. 64, and The Crime and Disorder Act 1998, c. 37.

Welsh university student:
Luke Salkeld, “Off to Jail in Cuffs,”
Daily Mail
, March 27, 2012.

“You
must be fucking barmy
”: William Oddie, “Liam Stacey’s Drunken Racist Tweets,” CatholicHerald.co.uk, March 30, 2012; “Liam Stacey Twitter Racism Against Fabrice Muamba, Don’t Lose the Evidence,” Youtube.com, posted by mattvandam1, March 17, 2012, accessed July 31, 2012.

Stiddard had called:
Luke Salkeld, “Next Time Just Call him a Fat B
^******
,”
Daily Mail
, January 16, 2007.

Ulysses
is now seen as a classic:
See Shane Sherman, “
Ulysses
by James Joyce,” TheGreatestBooks.org, accessed July 31, 2012.

“
the most infamously obscene
”: These three quotes come from Elizabeth Ladenson,
Dirt for Art’s Sake: Books on Trial from
Madame Bovary
to
Lolita (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 79.

“
I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s
”: James Joyce,
Ulysses
(1922), accessed via BompaCrazy.com, 504.

“
God fuck
”: Ibid., 506.

“
Bugger off
”: Ibid., 505.

“
And she saw a long Roman candle
”: Ibid., 349.

alert reader John Sumner:
Robert Denning, ed.,
James Joyce: The Critical Heritage
, vol. 1:
1907–1927
(London: Routledge, 1970), 18; Ladenson,
Dirt for Art’s Sake
, 71–106; Bennett Cerf,
At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf
(New York: Random House, 2002), 90–99.

The trial happened in 1933: The United States of America v. One Book Entitled Ulysses
, 5 F. Supp. 182, 72 F.2d 705 (1934).

the Hicklin Rule:
Wayne Overbeck and Genelle Belmas, eds.,
Major Principles of Media Law
(Boston: Wadsworth, 2012), 419–24; Joseph Kelly,
Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 131–33.

“
whether the tendency
”: Joel Feinberg,
Offense to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 171.

“
If I use the taboo words
”: quoted in Hughes,
Swearing
, 191.

The book had been published in several editions:
John Sutherland,
Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain, 1960–1982
(London: Junction Books, 1982), 10–31; Michael Squires, “Introduction,” in D. H. Lawrence,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).