[Editor's note: I didn't write this, but I thought it was a pretty interesting.]
It's called "It Hits the Fan" and was originally on in Season 5.intoto (_) 70 points ago* (86|16)
It offers a realistic explanation of the origin of the swear word. Shit did become a "cursed" word at about the time of the plague, and the Pope did send out his soldiers (Knights) to figure out why God was cursing the people. The area around London was a hotbed of language at the time and various words for shit ... poop, feces, dung, manure, scheisse, shite, skite ... were being incorporated into the language. Contemporaries of Geoffrey Chaucer and Chaucer himself wrote essays on how the language was being corrupted by these new words. Basically the complaint was a common one in history ... "all these God-damned foreignors! Speak English!" When speaking English meant speaking like this:
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0MtENfOMU&feature=relatedThere was also a strong class system in place. Because the incorporation of new words was often by people of the lowest classes, that by proximity were forced to incorporate new words into the working language to be able to communicate with one another, the people of the upper class considered these new words "vulgar," just as they considered the people of the lowest classes vulgar. In fact, the word vulgar at the time meant "lacking in good breeding" although the origin of the Latin word meant "common."
Whether or not there was ever a Papal edict declaring certain words "cursed" by God, and therefore anyone uttering those words would be also be cursed or damned by God, and that saying those words was ever a crime punishable by death ... is not really known. However, there was definitely a sense of urgency about the plague. When half the people die in a relatively short period of time, and disease is not understood, the survivors put a special emphasis on not repeating the behaviors of those who got sick and died. Probably among those behaviors was avoiding rats and fleas, and that was a good thing, but when the people didn't know for sure what to avoid, they surely avoided many things that were "wrong" to avoid because they had nothing to do with the plague.
Many "traditions" become rote after time and the origin or original purpose for those "traditional" behaviors becomes lost on subsequent generations ... often because the "reasons" why something was done were not included in the explanation for doing or performing an act.
The Catholic Church and surely other churches gave sermons in front of congregations of people that had a foul stench because for hundreds of years, bathing appears to have been "optional" ... rancid breath and body odors were common among the common people and so the clergy incorporated incense into many of the rituals and ceremonies they performed for the people. To not offend the paying customers by telling them that we are doing this because 'you people stink', they probably told them that God wanted the incense as an offering. Well, after the people started bathing, the incense part of the rituals stayed in the ceremonies ... despite the fact that is served no useful purpose anymore. The stupid lie to cover up the truth became "the reason" and no one questioned it, because it was God's will, and you don't question God's will.
My favorite modern update on this phenomenon goes like this:
A woman wants help from and wants to teach her teenage daughter to prepare the family's traditional Christmas meal. Part of that process is to cook a large ham the day before Xmas. So, as the mother is showing and telling her daughter what to do, she gets to a certain step that baffles the daughter. The mother tells the daughter to cut off the two ends of the ham. The daughter sees the big chunks of meat cut off that the mother lays on the side of the ham and asks, "Why are you cutting off the two ends of the ham?"
The mother stops for a second and thinks about it. It definitely increases the surface area (more space to glaze) and reduces the mass of the ham so that it probably cooks a little faster, but it also increases the probability of losing internal moisture. But these explanations won't do. The mother remembers and tells her daughter, "You know, I'm not quite sure why we cut off the ends of the ham. That's the way my mom taught me how to do it when I was your age, and I just figured it made the ham somehow better. I never asked her 'Why'."
The daughter then says, "Well, why don't we give grandma a call and ask?" So, with a sense of glee, they do just that.
But grandma doesn't have the answer. "It is funny that you ask that, because I remember wondering that myself when my mother taught me how to prepare the Xmas ham."
The grand-daughter chimes in ... "Grandma, do you have great-grandma's number? I can conference her in to this call and we can ask her."
So, they do that, and after exchanging pleasantries for a minute or so, the mother, daughter and grandmother reveal the purpose of their call. The grandmother relays to her mother, "You know mom, the girls are preparing the Xmas ham and they got to the point where they cut off the ends of the ham, and Brittany asked Liza why we cut off the ends of the ham, and since Liza didn't know, they called me and asked. But I didn't know either. All I know is that is how you taught me how to prepare it. So, mom, why do we cut off the ends of the Xmas ham?"
Great-grandma chuckles and laughs for a few seconds. "Oh, this is precious. Honey, do you remember that little stove we used to have?"
And fortunately, for this little bit of tradition, great-grandma was still alive. Unfortunately, for humanity, the contrary is often the case. The reasons why rote behaviors get passed down from generation to generation long after they have lost their original meaning is that events and circumstances conspire to lose that original justification. Then it just becomes "tradition" ... and we keep doing it because we have always done it.
And that is the story of cursed words, generically. The specific reasons for segregating certain specific words is lost. Some can be generally understood. People don't want to introduce sexual terminology to children before they are ready to take on that reality. And, for a long time, keeping children ignorant of their sexuality did seem to work to keep children from experimenting at too young of an age. A young girl who gets pregnant before her hips have grown to the point where she can give birth could very well die in childbirth ... and they often did. So, the warnings and even condemnations did serve some purpose.
But the "cursed" words involving other body functions ... well, differentiation between words like "poop," which is deemed OK, and "shit," which is not OK ... is basically a load of bull. It is that way because of tradition.
So, I told my sons those kinds of explanations, and said that even though there is no logical reason for why some words are bad and some are good, society still accepts the basic idea that there are bad and good words. So, you can be judged harshly for saying those words in the wrong context or around the wrong people. In fact, you can even be arrested and fined. Because people are stupid.
And because, "Well, we've always done it that way", or "It just is that way" ... is often, really, the answer. And even though that is stupid, you still have live on this planet with billions of other people and try to eek out a happy life. So, you should choose your battles wisely.
