Re: &*%$ words

["Robert E. Allen" <re_allen -at- PNL -dot- GOV>]

In article <Pine -dot- 3 -dot- 07 -dot- 9407301002 -dot- A26967-b100000 -at- cap -dot- gwu -dot- edu>, Lester Klein
 <lklein -at- cap -dot- gwu -dot- edu> says:


>        Cursing: a curse is the opposite of a blessing.  Hence, to curse
>means to wish evil or calamity on someone.

>        Swearing: To swear is to take and make an oath.

>        Finally, there is the use of obscenities:  expletives, "dirty
>words", etc.

A distinction, IMHO, is that cursing and swearing both involve religion,
such as invoking the name of a diety or condemming someone to
an eternally hot place.    Obscenities seem to broken down into
vulgar and pornographic words.  Vulgarities are largely the Anglo-
Saxon words describing bodily functions.  Pornography is supposed
to arouse the audience ("appeal to the purient interest).  Since most
sexually based profanity doesn't  provide a turn-on, it isn't pornographic.

The danger in overusing any of these terms is that they lose their impact,
their ability to express strong emotion.  As when I was driving stakes into
the ground and hit my foot, dead center, with the hammer.  I opened my
mouth, but no words came out because every word I could thing of I
had used often enough to make it commonplace.  Nothing seemed
adequate to express my feelings.  A very frustrating, not to say
painful, experience.

Or, as I said to one of our potty-mouthed secretaries who was inviting
her computer to perform a highly improbable act, "You don't kiss
your baby with that mouth, do you?"

Bob