Ancient swearwords

It's probably a little silly, but the Shakespearen insult list is pretty creative. Maybe you'll find something there.

I'd think using "god" or something similar would still be very appropriate. I'd imagine using the lord's name in vain was much more offensive back then!

Remember: "Swearing" used to be just that--the speaker swearing some fate upon someone.

Likewise, "cursing" was the same way--the speaker genuinely asking the Powers That Be to give someone a particularly evil fate.

We use the terms for single words or short phrases, but they used to be quite elaborate and were taken quite seriously in days gone by.

Just something to consider.

An expletive or obscenity I recall from one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (circa 1300) was "shitten," referring to excrement as the adjective "shitty" is used today.

Chase said:

An expletive or obscenity I recall from one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (circa 1300) was "shitten," referring to excrement as the adjective "shitty" is used today.

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Catullus used the same adjective in poem 36: cacata carta, "shitty pages". (Catullus has some poems that use vocabulary that wasn't in my Latin dictionary. Fortunately, the text had a footnote defining them in Latin, using nouns I knew from modern medicine.)

DeleyanLee said:

Remember: "Swearing" used to be just that--the speaker swearing some fate upon someone.

Likewise, "cursing" was the same way--the speaker genuinely asking the Powers That Be to give someone a particularly evil fate.

We use the terms for single words or short phrases, but they used to be quite elaborate and were taken quite seriously in days gone by.

Just something to consider.

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I think you're implying a greater difference between ancient practice and modern than can be sustained by the evidence.

It's true that people would swear, in the sense of vowing, and curse, in the sense of invoking harm on other people. We have some fascinating physical evidence of the rituals that they would do, some thoughtless as the way some modern people toss a pinch of spilled salt over their left shoulder, some as elaborate as any present-day religious ceremony.

But they also got mad and used foul language to vent. They were, after all, people, and as prone as modern people to bang their shins, hit their thumbs with hammers, or end up at cross-purposes with their neighbors. Foul language in those circumstances is a human trait, not a modern one.

Chase said:

An expletive or obscenity I recall from one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (circa 1300) was "shitten," referring to excrement as the adjective "shitty" is used today.

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Except it wasn't really an expletive then; it's the word people used.

Cf. Chaucer General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. "A shiten shepherde and a clene sheep." l. 504.

Personally, I'm a fan of Yiddish curses.

Medievalist said:

Except it wasn't really an expletive then; it's the word people used.

Cf. Chaucer General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. "A shiten shepherde and a clene sheep." l. 504.

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I'll take your word for it. Catullus was using it as an expletive, but Ye Olden Dayes weren't uniform across time or space.

areteus said:

Lots of interesting ideas... I need to do some research for when I rewrite this

One thing I have always wondered about Chaucer and words such as 'shitten' - is this an indication of how the word was actually pronounced at the time or merely an example of the sort of spelling you got before the days it was standardised? Or maybe a bit of both?

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We're pretty sure about the London/Southern dialect of Middle English in terms of pronunciation. For one thing, we know what the previous and successive language looked like, for another, we have lots and lots of it in meter, and even, end-rhymes.

Moreover, spelling was phonological; letters represented sounds.

Depending on how curious people are, I can post links of Middle and Old English audio.