Grammar Girl Swearing

• Gadzooks means "God's hooks" referring to the nails in the cross
• Gee Whiz comes from “geewhillikins” possibly meaning "Jesus" or "Jerusalem"
• Zounds means "God's wounds" [1]

Taboo Is the Source of Swearing's Power


What gives swearing this power? In short, a society’s taboos. “Taboo” in this sense covers not just the forbidden, but any domain of activity or social interaction where social norms regulate behavior (4, 5). Whatever a society deems taboo is a wellspring of words deemed obscene or profane—as well as euphemisms for those words.

Changing Taboos: Religion

Taboos vary over time, and as they change, so do the words that are considered socially unacceptable. Several hundred years ago, the strongest taboos among English-speakers were religious in nature (6). During Shakespeare’s times, expressions like “Zounds!” were considered vulgar, because they were shortened versions of (in this case) “God’s wounds.” If you wonder why saying “God’s wounds” would have been offensive, that just shows how much more secular English-speaking society is today than it was back then. This taboo weakened further even in the 20th century, with words like “hell” and “damn” losing their offensiveness only in the past generation or so (although they are still offensive to older or more religious speakers).

From the Victorian Era: Taboos on Sex and Bodily Functions

In the Victorian Era, sex and bodily functions of elimination became strong taboos. The taboos were strengthened in the United States by the self-imposed restrictions in the movie industry in the 1930s and ‘40s (7). The bodily-function taboos have been weakening over the last few decades, though, and more recently, so has the sex taboo. In the introduction to his book The F Word, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower devotes almost a dozen pages to tracing the weakening of the taboo against this word in virtually every medium.

Even so, other sexual taboo words are still considered extremely offensive. In particular, the word commonly referred to as the C-word is considered so offensive in English that when the movie Kick-*ss came out in May, it generated controversy not so much because of its title, or even its abundance of violence, but for having 13-year-old actor Chloe Grace Moretz say that word.


Different Cultures, Different Types of Swearing

Taboos also vary from culture to culture. For example, in French- and Spanish-speaking countries, where the Catholic church has had a strong influence, religion-based swearing packs more of a punch than it does in English (8). In contrast, their equivalent of the C-word is only mildly offensive.


The Most Powerful Current Swear Words

These days, the truly potent taboos in American society concern traits that have been the basis of prejudice and discrimination: disability, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Last August, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used “retarded” (along with the F-word) in a private meeting, but when his comments became public, there were calls for his resignation. which he used the N-word, coupled with his remarks about Jews in 2006, have some predicting the end of his career.

In 2007, Isaiah Washington lost his role on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy after calling a fellow castmember an offensive term for homosexual.[2]