This article is NOT SAFE FOR WORK
We’ve gone through our friends the greeks and romans in the previous two issues, and now we’ve gotten to a part of history that’s not that far away from us, hence it’s much easier and (at times) way more accurate to pinpoint those swear words.
The Victorian era was also peak of the Industrial Revolution era, mainly because of the discovery of utilizing steam. This fact triggered the opening of more and more factories and shops, which in itself opened up the need for more workers which don’t require any education and training. Taking that into account, you can probably guess what happened — the “simple” folk from small towns and villages, along with their families started moving to the bigger cities where these factories were in. People from allover the country along with their slang words and regional dialects all pooled in the major cities, and oh boy.
Back then the middle class up to the aristocrats, or the “gentlemen”, would only swear and allow themselves to use profanities were when they were only in a strictly male group, and in private. The ladies wouldn’t swear at all basically, some would do in private but that wasn’t often heard. When all the simple folk pooled in, you may guess that swearing and profanities became a thing of the normal daily life. In fact, they became so normal and spoken casually that most of our modern day profanities in English originated from that time period.
But how did these profanities sound back then? Like I said, these profanities modelled our modern swear words, but to get to that, they had to start somewhere. Solid proof we can get from records of court proceedings, plays, books, poems from back in the day. Other proof we can find from personal communication, or word for word records that were passed down to archivists.
So let’s get to the basics, starting with the word “bloody”.
Bloody — “bloody” didn’t start off as a horrid, bad word. It was a word that would be used in anger or being affected mainly, you could see it in plays or poems, people were pretty cool with it, but the more people came into the big cities, the worse the meaning of the word got. The uneducated folk started using “bloody” more and more since their vocabulary simply lacked. The upper class started viewing that word as worse and worse, the more simple folk used it.
Bugger — Another profanity that started off in a not very regular way. It became a profanity quite early, however, used non-literally and with the flexibility to be used in however way one would like — as a verb, adjective or noun. “Bugger off” or “Take the bugger off” — it was universal, easy to use, not as heavily profane as “bloody” but still did the trick.
Fuck — In 1866, a man swore in an affidavit that one Mr. Baker had told him he “would be fucked out of his money by Mr. Brown.” The notary who recorded the testimony editorializes, “Before putting down the word as used by the witness, I requested him to reflect upon the language he attributed to Mr. Baker, and not to impute to him an outrage upon all that was decent.” Luckily for us, the witness insisted he copy it down, outrage or no, and so we have the first recorded use of fuck meaning “cheat, victimize, betray.” From then on it’s history. We’re all familliar with it, we’ve all used it, probably the most recognizable word in the English language, “fuck” has become the most used profanity in any kind of form of the word. Un-fucking-believable.
Now that we’ve covered the three basics. Thanks to the 1811 “Classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue”, that can be viewed for free on the internet, we are provided with a plethora of hilarious terms and words such as:
ARK RUFFIANS. Rogues who, in conjunction with watermen, robbed, and sometimes murdered, on the water, by picking a quarrel with the passengers in a boat, boarding it, plundering, stripping, and throwing them overboard, &c. A species of badger.
BASKET-MAKING. The good old trade of basket-making; copulation, or making feet for children’s stockings.
BONE BOX. The mouth. Shut your bone box; shut your mouth.
TO BOX THE JESUIT, AND GET COCK ROACHES. A sea term for masturbation; a crime, it is said, much practised by the reverend fathers of that society.
PISS PROPHET. A physician who judges of the diseases of his patients solely by the inspection of their urine. As you may have guessed, the victorians had a very interesting understanding of medicine at the time.
TANTADLIN TART. A sirreverence, human excrement.
WINDWARD PASSAGE. One who uses or navigates the windward passage; a sodomite. Or in other words — someone who enjoys the thrills of anal sex.
WRY MOUTH AND A PISSEN PAIR OF BREECHES. Hanging. As you can see, people would often get out of their way to say something longer, but better sounding than what the idiom is meant to portray just for the fun of it.
The list goes on, and on, and if you’d like to enrich your own vocabulary I suggest you take a good look at the dictionary yourself.
Ok so maybe not ALL the profanities could make their way into our modern day swear jars, and I’m honestly a little disappointed from that fact, but most of the creativity got into the English language cursing. Some of the profanities that are described in the dictionary are still used in one form or another in parts of the United Kingdom which makes it all the better, but in either way, we have our victorian friends to thank for enriching the English language that we know and love today.
To finish off this trilogy of exciting and vulgar words that our ancestors used, I hope that you guys were able to see and understand that these people were more like us than we’re thinking. Often times we see our ancestors as these tall, stoic figures that look upon us sternly from the afterlife, often shaking their heads in disappointment (at least I’m pretty sure mine would be), and it’s things like these that really bring us closer. Our ancestors were also very much human, living in un-romantic times just like us, swearing, farting, and laughing at all of that. And what do we do with history? We learn from it, of course.
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