Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

On 31 Jan 2005, at 11.34 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)
wrote:

> Carsten Becker wrote:
>
>> different languages. In one of the recent English lessons,
>> our teacher told us that "sh*t" is considered to be worse
>> than "f*ck" in English.
>
> Oh, no! Your teacher is most assuredly wrong for all English dialects
> I'm aware of.
We can agree here. Or at least, we could till this discussion cropped
up. Your teacher is most assuredly wrong for mine and Adrian's dialect!
(I've personally never got censoring 'shit', it seems so extreme, like
censoring 'bugger' or 'bloody', or even 'strewth'.)

> Chris Bates wrote:
>
>> Noo.... bloody is worse than damn, but not as bad as fuck, cunt or
>> shit.
>> As for the ranking of the last three... they all seem mild to me. I've
>> heard so much swearing nothing really offends me anymore, but if I had
>> to rank them I'd say:
>>
>> fuck < shit < cunt
>
> I'd say "damn < shit < bloody < fuck < cunt". I'm assuming (except in
> the case of "cunt") that the target of the swearing is an inanimate
> object and not another person, since this is usually the case.
I'm inclined to say that 'shit' is worse than bloody, even though
'shit' isn't particularly bad. If the government can use it, it can't
be a swearword. (The Transport Accident Commission has a slogan
reminding us that if you drink then drive, you're a bloody idiot. I
don't know if this is perculiar to Victoria, Australia, the Antipodes,
'bloody'-using nations, English-speaking countries, or the world, or
even if aliens from another galaxy use it. Google seems to show a lot
of hits clearly (i.e. based on the results page) in Australia and New
Zealand, but none clearly elsewhere, so it might be Antipodean, but
Google doesn't index alien worlds to my knowledge.)


> Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
>> > I cannot believe you're likening 'shit' to 'fuck'. In my use and
>> > experience, it's not much worse than 'stuff'. Obviously it varies in
>> > intensity...
>>
>> Well, believe it.
Oh I will, and I really doubt that there's anything about English
dialects I truly 'cannot believe'. It still seems odd, though, that
'shit' would be considered a swear word like 'fuck'. (I certainly
didn't mean to say you're wrong about your use.)

>> They have not been bleached of emotional
>> content for everyone in this world...
>
> There is, IME, a small minority of young Australians for whom "shit"
> seems to mean "stuff" without even being intrinsically derogatory -
> and many more Australians, young and old, for whom this usage is most
> galling.
I wouldn't say it was particularly limited to particularly 'young
Australians', and I've never heard anyone describe it as 'most galling'
(or, in fact, anything other than colloquial). Perhaps I automatically
don't use it when someone who might find it 'galling' is amongst my
audience.

> "Shit" is what you say when your computer crashes and you lose the
> entire essay you've just been writing. You can also say, "I've had to
> put up with all sorts of shit today", which is not at all the same as
> mere "stuff".
It doesn't *mean* stuff, but there I'd say it's no *worse* than 'stuff'
(as a noun, in the sense of miscellania, not as a verb, like what you'd
do to a chook). Both are colloquial, and if you tried hard enough you
could be offended by either, but they aren't being used to offend.

--
Tristan.