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Honestly, when you consider the etymology of "profanity" and "curse word", they all go back to religious roots. Even the use of deliberately misspelled and misp
by amyjess 10y ago
Honestly, when you consider the etymology of "profanity" and "curse word", they all go back to religious roots. Even the use of deliberately misspelled and mispronounced curse words is called a "minced oath".
We don't really have a good word for swearing that's not a religious reference. The closest we have is "obscenity", but that traditionally only refers to sexual words. For example, "fuck" is obscenity, but "goddammit" is profanity.
- eru 10y agoA comparison to other languages and cultures would be useful.
- distances 10y agoIn Finnish the origin for "curse word" comes from incantation / casting a spell. At least nowadays the root word means purely a hostile spell, or a hex. I'd say in modern use basically equivalent to "a curse" in English, as the magical aspect isn't really present in the society any more. I can't say if it has originally also included benevolent spells.