Bagpipe your beard-splitter if you want, but mind the fartleberries.

May 11, 2013 12:22 PM

An excerpt from Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr. (Salon article; be warned.)
posted by Scattercat (7 comments total)

Also of note, Maledicta, which was interesting until it went totally off the rails.
posted by benzenedream at 12:30 PM on May 11, 2013

Also of note, MeFi's Own™ languagehat wrote a book about untranslate-able swears called Uglier Than A Monkey's Armpit.
posted by carsonb at 12:46 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is this the place I can petition to bring back "dingleberry" and "dingbat" as equivalent to "douche"? Nobody likes a dingleberry.
posted by Mizu at 1:20 PM on May 11, 2013

not a true history if it doesn't include "butt puzzle"
posted by Tesseractive at 1:26 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Bloody is a fantastic all purpose swear word. I can use it in front of my mother without being told off yet it manages to convey appropriate vexation with whatever ails you.
posted by arcticseal at 2:02 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

A character in the mock Christmas pantomime “Harlequin Prince Cherrytop and the Good Fairy Fairfuck” (1879) declares, “For all your threats I don’t care a fuck. / I’ll never leave my princely darling duck.” (The panto relates the story of Prince Cherrytop, who has become enslaved by the Demon of Masturbation. The Good Fairy Fairfuck helps him conquer his addiction to self-abuse, so he can embrace the joys of holy matrimony with his betrothed, the Princess Shovituppa. It was written by an eminent journalist for the Daily Telegraph, whose work had also been published by Dickens and Thackeray.)

That's a Christmas special I'd tune in for.
posted by kjh at 2:09 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

Also of note, Maledicta, which was interesting until it went totally off the rails.

I've bought the annual editions of Maledicta when I've found them at used bookstores and such. When/why did it go off the rails, if you don't mind telling the story?
posted by the sobsister at 5:04 PM on May 12, 2013