Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 17:52:17 +0000, Chris Bates
<chris.maths_student@...> wrote:

>The thing is, offending people with words isn't the same as swearing,
>really. I could say "you're a fat pig" and you might be insulted, but
>"pig" is not a swearword in English since it has nonoffensive meanings
>as well. Every language I know has some words that are always
>vulgar/offensive, but I don't think it's impossible for a language not
>to have those kinds of words... that wouldn't mean that people who speak
>that language don't offend each other with words though. :) It'd just
>mean that they have no words exclusively dedicated to offending people,
>and simply recruit other words with non-offensive meanings as well (like
>pig above) for the purpose.
I believe that all insults have or at least originally had non-offensive
meanings. What may happen is that the non-offensive meaning falls into
disuse when the word is considered too offensive.

Just for fun, here's kind of a detailed semantic analysis of the word
_fuck_: http://www.amishrakefight.org/gfy/images/fword.mp3 :)

kry@s:
j. 'mach' wust