{"id":6474,"date":"2021-03-26T07:31:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T11:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=6474"},"modified":"2021-03-26T07:31:57","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T11:31:57","slug":"i-swear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2021\/03\/i-swear\/","title":{"rendered":"I Swear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cGood gravy!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When I came across that exclamation recently in an online essay, it fueled a whole train of thought. <\/span><\/p>\n

Good grief<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Golly<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Gosh<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Criminy <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Darn you<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Doggone it <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

These expressions have passed their use-by dates, as have those of us who still utter them. The dictionary says they\u2019re euphemisms, but I remember them as escape hatches. As a child, if I started to swear and suddenly realized there was someone nearby (like my mother) who might object, I could convert \u201cGod!\u201d into \u201cGosh!\u201d in mid-syllable, or \u201cDamn you!\u201d into \u201cDarn you!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Some of those escape hatches are very old. According to the dictionary, the first recorded use of \u201cgolly\u201d was in 1775. I wonder what it says about our culture that words like \u201cGod\u201d that I was forbidden to use as expletives in the 1940s\u2014and which apparently required an escape hatch for centuries before that\u2014have now almost totally lost their power to offend or shock. <\/span><\/p>\n

In our childhoods, my brother, David, and I\u2014both under 10\u2014fought a lot, and our mother was especially upset when we cursed or called each other names. So we invented a word that we could take with us into battle. <\/span><\/p>\n

If David snatched something of mine, I\u2019d say through gritted teeth, \u201cYou\u2019re such an ignastectamong!\u201d He\u2019d know I\u2019d just called him the worst thing I could think of. He often threatened me with \u201cGive that back or I\u2019ll ignastectamong you,\u201d and Mom was none the wiser. Or so we thought. <\/span><\/p>\n

By the time I was raising my own children in the 1970s, I saw no harm in swearing, but I knew many other parents didn\u2019t agree. When the kids first brought home swear words, I told them that those were at-home words. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can say them all you want at home,\u201d I said, \u201cbut don\u2019t use swear words anywhere else, because your teacher or your friends\u2019 parents might not like it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Euphemisms such as \u201cgosh\u201d were stand-ins for words borrowed from religion that became swear words when used in a sacrilegious way. Today\u2019s curse words revolve around sex instead. Has that happened because we\u2019re a more secular society? Or one that\u2019s sex-obsessed? <\/span><\/p>\n

The f-word is everywhere today. Granted, it\u2019s highly versatile\u2014can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb or expletive. <\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s being overused, and it too has lost the power to shock most people, except perhaps those in my generation. And it seems to me like pure laziness when every third word a person utters is the f-word. Our language is so rich in other possibilities. <\/span><\/p>\n

I offer you ignastectamong. Or invent a word of your own. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cGood gravy!\u201d When I came across that exclamation recently in an online essay, it fueled a whole train of thought.  Good grief Golly Gosh Criminy  Darn you Doggone it  These expressions have passed their use-by dates, as have those of…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more I Swear<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":null,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":null,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6476,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6474\/revisions\/6476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}