Swearing ain’t what it was once, if we’re to imagine the information. In 2021, polls recommended {that a} third of us use stronger language in the present day than we did 5 years in the past. The uptick has been blamed variously on the affect of social media, gaming, motion pictures, late-night comedy exhibits, and the pandemic. However no matter our causes, we’ve got it appears descended right into a nation of potty mouths.
Fortunately, it’s not simply us. This week, a Canadian choose dismissed a harassment declare primarily based on an aggrieved particular person being proven the center finger by his neighbour. “To be abundantly clear,” the choose wrote in his ruling, “it isn’t against the law to offer somebody the finger. Flipping the proverbial chicken is a God-given, charter-enshrined proper that belongs to each red-blooded Canadian.”
You are reading: We are a nation of proud potty mouths because swearing is good for you
Few of us would argue that the precise to reveal fingers is loads much less dangerous than bearing arms. However the case reignites the gnarly debate as to how a lot freedom of expression provides a secure house for “dangerous” language. Employment tribunals steadily centre round an worker’s use of profanity in the direction of colleagues or bosses. Such discussions increase nothing new, however the query of bodily gestures ups the ante significantly.
But this, too, is way from a contemporary phenomenon. Displaying somebody the center finger has been a gesture of obscenity since historic occasions. The Romans even referred to as it the digitus impudicus, or “indecent finger”, for it was extensively interpreted as a suggestion of an erect penis (one other obscene hand gesture, the V signal, may then recommend a double penis).
The historian Tacitus wrote of a battle through which German tribesmen collectively gave advancing Roman troopers the center finger, the predecessors maybe to the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island, whose expletive-laden verbal response to Putin’s forces – “Russian warship, go fuck your self” – rapidly turned an emblem of patriotic braveness.
The act of flipping the chicken (so named within the nineteenth century as a result of it was a silent manner of delivering an aggressive, goose-like hiss) sits alongside one other digital swear, “the fig”, through which the thumb is wedged between two fingers, this time representing feminine genitalia. This identical gesture is even hiding throughout the phrase “sycophant”, Greek for “fig bathe”, the implication being {that a} fawning flatterer could also be saying and doing very various things behind the flatteree’s again.
The repertoire of hand-gestures goes on, shared throughout totally different nations as a robust and common language. In Elizabethan England, thumb-biting was a distinctly confrontational gesture, involving the putting of the tip of the thumb behind the entrance enamel and flicking it ahead. In some cultures, the spreading of 5 fingers with the palm dealing with ahead means that the recipient has “5 fathers”, in different phrases they’re a “bastard”. The age-old gesture for a “wanker”, in the meantime, is unmistakable to anybody who spends time on a British highway.
What’s fascinating right here is that a lot of this express physique language has held sway since antiquity, with no or little discount in their energy to offend. Our verbal insults are totally different – a lot of in the present day’s prime taboos have been as soon as significantly much less offensive than in the present day. Within the Center Ages, kestrels have been often called “windfuckers”, dandelions have been “pissabeds”, and vegetation referred to as “cuntehoare” and “bollocks grass” graced the countryside. The names Randulfus Bla de Scotebroc (roughly, Randall Shitboast) and Thomas Turd are each recorded in county court docket rolls within the twelfth and 14th century, as is, moderately improbably, a person with the surname Fuckbythenavele. Right now, it was non secular profanity that attracted the deepest censure.
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However language has at all times been sweepingly round. Strolling across the Roman Empire, you’d have seen swathes of penis photos – in graffiti, painted above doorways, and even drawn upon chariot wheels. An erect phallus was believed to divert the gaze of the evil eye, and talismans often called fascina have been frequently hung round necks and above doorways – it was their bewitching energy that gave us our phrase “fascinate”. However the language of penises was totally different, and the ten most taboo phrases in Latin revolved round our bodies and intercourse. It’s no coincidence subsequently that any physique language representing them was equally highly effective.
Maybe the larger query is why people have at all times wanted to swear within the first place. It’s an space through which analysis is extremely energetic. Scientists and medics are discovering an increasing number of proof that swearing helps us physiologically by relieving stress, frustration, nervousness, and ache. It even has a reputation: “lalochezia” (actually, “mouth excrement” or, in trendy phrases, dumping your verbal shit).
The reality is, we’ll by no means not have “dangerous language”. It’s an innate want whether or not or not we reply its name in public. Somewhat than stemming from a poverty of vocabulary, swearwords are, because the linguist Kate Burridge places it, “socially and emotionally indispensable”. Hand gestures are, by this calculation, no totally different.
As ever, although, context is the whole lot. Pink-blooded Canadians apart, it’s most likely far wiser to flip your chicken or present your fig in personal. Indecent fingers aren’t for everybody.
Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. She has appeared in Dictionary Nook on Countdown since 1992, and co-hosts with Gyles Brandreth the podcast Something Rhymes with Purple.
