Curse(d) Words - Ep. 13

A warning for delicate ears: this episode contains explicit language. We hope you’ll pardon us; when the topic is cursed words, some of those words do insist on showing up and being heard.

On the 13th episode of Cursed…ish, Daniel and Angela investigate curses of a more etymological persuasion: curse words. Why do certain sounds become dangerous, filthy, or forbidden? Why did ancient speakers stop saying the original word for the beast they feared the most out of a suspicion that uttering its name might summon one forth? How did damn go from a terrifying sentence of eternal condemnation to one of our mildest swear words? And where did the word fuck actually come from, and why has it become the undisputed king of English profanity?

Along the way, we unpack the strange history of taboo language, from Bronze Age euphemisms and divine damnation to medieval court records featuring the curious case of Roger Fuck-By-The-Navel. Because curse words are more than just dirty language. They reveal what people fear, what they revere, what they repress, and why sometimes only a well-placed “fuck” will do.

https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/earliest-use-f-word/

https://sslh.org.uk/2023/06/07/i-dont-know-where-he-gets-his-fucking-language-from/

Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com.

The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes.

*Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

Transcript

Daniel 0:00

So all these people, hundreds of years ago, were just like, we gotta dip our lips. We cannot keep talking about these monsters because they're coming after us. So all these different cultures just stop talking about them. This is like almost like Voldemort levels of commitment. So it's like another thing J.K. Rowling has just stolen from.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

God, that woman has not had a single original thought.

Daniel 0:21

Uh Welcome, accursed ones, to Cursed Ish, a podcast with a co-host who occasionally processes the horrors of existence by shouting a choice four-letter word, or three, into the void. I'm Daniel Fucking Stevens.

Angela 0:45

What up, bitch? I'm Angela Mattis.

Daniel 0:48

I'm glad you matched my energy with this. I was hoping you would.

Angela 0:53

I don't know if anyone's noticed this by now, but I like to say swear words.

Daniel 0:57

So I guess, yeah, let's get this started. Uh from the very top, warning, this episode will feature a lot of explicit language, uh, because we're gonna talk about curse words. One quick moment before we really get into it, though, before anyone starts writing us an angry email, send those to uh oh at cursed dish.com, by the way. I do want to draw an important line in salt on the floor. We're talking about curse words, profane, obscene, vulgar, even blasphemous. The things that for one reason or another have become like filthy, bad words in our language. We're not talking today about slurs in any way. Those are a completely different beast. Those are words that, you know, have a history of dehumanization, attack people for who they are, what they are, and have real social violence behind them. Those fall into a completely different moral universe than what we're talking about. So I just want to make it clear we're talking about, you know, swear words, not just all types of offensive words. There are obviously offensive words that I do think fall into a category that is wildly beyond what we're talking about, and I just want to make it clear that is not what we're talking about today.

Angela 1:57

Okay, good. Because I don't want to talk about those words either.

Daniel 2:01

So the reason I decided to talk about cursed words, curse words, swear words today is this is actually episode number 13. So I kind of thought it would be fun to take an episode that should be cursed numerologically and then look at a more etymological curse. Etymological curse. Sorry, I'm giving myself myself with words so difficult to say. But there is this thing, it's like, why do we even call them cursed words? I mean, obviously there's going to be words people have to use to describe things that we don't like. But what is it that, like, why do we call them curse words? Because it seems like every human society at some point listens to certain sounds coming out of someone's mouth and it's like, oh yes, those are the bad ones. Those ones, those are bad, those are dangerous. There's actually an idea that they are dangerous to hear directed at you, dangerous to say yourself, and they take on this force of their own. They're words that when you're a kid, you learn them, like you're not supposed to learn them, but you learn them and then you learn when you can use them, how you can get away with using them and everything. And it's this whole weird idea of like what is it about specific words that become so taboo?

Angela 3:09

I honestly never really have thought about this before, and I'm wondering if a lot of them come from the historic period in time when witchcraft was really prevalent as like a negative force. I wonder how many words came from spells.

Daniel 3:25

That's yeah, there that sort of does seem. There is like this idea. Remember, we've talked when we were talking about the ancient Egyptian religion, how like words and names have power? Yes, yeah. It's it seems like a lot of that, that a lot of people in our past, our ancestors, have have taken this idea that the words you say can literally bring about acts. And so some were feared because they thought they would bring down judgment from the divine, you know, there's there's blasphemy involved in swear words. Some because they drag our gaze inwards at our body into things that we kind of have inherent disgust at, maybe bodily function, exactly. And sex even is something we often vilify or have a complicated relationship with. And then some were just feared because they seem like they just brought down bad things on the actual person saying it, just for having dared to utter the word itself. So that gets me to kind of the first one I want to talk about that I think is really emblematic. We're gonna talk about a couple swear words today. And I the first one I want to talk about is absolute classic, and it's such a classic that we don't even know what the word itself is anymore, actually. Because we know what it was referring to, but we do not know what the word the people originally were saying because it became such a feared word that an entire culture of people just stopped saying that word altogether, and now the word we use to refer to it is not the original word.

Angela 4:49

I want to guess. Oh my god, wait, let me think.

Daniel 4:51

We can I can start a story for you and tell me when you think you know what I'm gonna talk about. I'm just gonna shout it out like well shout it at your own risk. Imagine for me, Angela, that you're living in northern Europe during the Bronze Age. So you're a young northern European woman walking down a forested path for some reason, doing a chore, maybe going to trade, do something. Your native language is what we would today call probably Proto-Germanic. It's an ancestor of the Germanic languages, which includes English, German, Dutch, Swedish.

Angela 5:23

I already know one word that comes to mind if I am a woman living in the Bronze Age.

Daniel 5:28

Oh god.

Angela 5:28

Fuck.

Daniel 5:31

That that did not enter the language yet. We'll get to fuck later. Okay. But good guess, but that is not where we're going with this. So you're out walking in the forest, you hear some rustling in the trees, and you're like, okay, there's lots of stuff in the forest. But then you hear some more rustling, and maybe a rumbling, and you see a shadowy figure in through the underbrush, and you're sort of like, oh god, what could it be? And in your mind, you think you know what it is, but you say to yourself, I will not say what it is, because I will not bring that thing forward. Because people back in the day, they thought saying the word that I'm about to say would actually bring forth this ferocious creature.

Angela 6:10

Is it like damn and it starts from demon?

Daniel 6:14

No, what we're talking about today are bears.

Angela 6:18

Bears?

Daniel 6:19

Bears. Bear was the original swear word.

unknown 6:22

Bear?

Daniel 6:23

Bear, yes. Well, the thing is, it wasn't bear. It was some word we do not know. Because people in the Bronze Age started saying a word close to bear, the word that would become bear today, something along the lines of barrow or bearon, and it meant the brown one. Because there was a word for bear, but people became so terrified of saying that word for fear that it would call it forth from the forest, bringing forth death and destruction. I mean, have you heard about bear attacks?

Angela 6:54

Um, yeah, but was that Leonardo DiCaprio movie where I had to sit and watch one?

Daniel 6:58

Exactly, the revenant. I mean, have you heard about that? There was that woman recently in Russia. She and her dad were out hunting and they were killed by bears, and she managed to call her mom several times while the bears were eating her alive. Oh no. Okay, I was true nightmare fuel.

Angela 7:16

I didn't hear about that. Thank you.

Daniel 7:18

Yeah, I mean, do some Googling. It's truly nightmare fuel. No. There's that story in the Bible of those kids who make fun of the bald guy, and then God curses them by sending a bear to kill the kids, and the bear just like absolutely annihilates the kids. Like, bears were the justifiably the most feared thing back in the day.

Angela 7:37

Okay, I've never heard that Bible story, but also like, are we sure about the Bible, you guys? Like, what the fuck was that story?

Daniel 7:45

No, it's wild. So people were absolutely terrified of bears. They were speaking their old Germanic language, and everyone just stopped saying the actual word for bears. They started saying the brown one. This is actually the earliest example known of a true euphemism just taking over the full word. And we have lost to history the word. No one knows what the word for bear used to be at that point in history. Linguists can trace it back, and it goes from all of a sudden being this bear-like word to just not existing because people started saying it because they were so afraid of it. Um, so it's like that's to me, and it's not even just Germanic peoples, the people of Slavic languages, so entire other groups did the same thing. Slavic languages, they don't have their original word for bear either. They use something like honey eater or honey knower and things derived from that. And Baltic languages also use something along the lines of like the wild one or the unruly one. So all these people, hundreds of years ago, were just like, we gotta fucking zip our lips. We cannot keep talking about these monsters because they're coming after us. So all these different cultures just stopped talking about them. This is like almost like Voldemort levels of commitment. So it's like another thing JK Rowling has just stolen.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

God, that woman has not had a single original thought.

Daniel 9:04

So, I mean, I just think it's wild that like there was no internet spreading this chain letter around, like, oh, don't say the bad word, and bears will come get you. Just people got the message and they said, we're done saying that word. And I think, and it's so the fact that we do not know what that word is anymore. There are ways that linguists have sort of reconstructed it to take guesses at because we're able to look at other languages that like the Germanic languages and the Slavic languages are even more distantly related to. We can actually go all the way back to a language that they've reconstructed called Proto-Indo-European.

Angela 9:38

Oh, is that what they were calling it back in the day? Oh, do you speak Proto-Indo-European? No, no, no. I speak only Latin.

Daniel 9:47

Well, and like so Latin came from Proto-Indo-European. So we know that this language did exist. We can sort of figure out the general idea of how a lot of things worked in it, because we can say we know, for example, Latin branched off, and eventually, like normal language changes happen in patterns. So certain things become this in the Latin branch, certain things became this in the Germanic branch, certain things became this in the Indo branch. So that's like the languages of India, Iran, a lot of the Middle East, all the way through Europe, those are all branched from this one super old language that was spoken six to four thousand years ago. But they can look at how it all traces back to this. So it's kind of crazy.

Angela 10:29

Like I wonder what that language sounded like.

Daniel 10:32

Yeah, and that when you look at the like notation for these, it's not just letters. There's like little subscript numbers and there's asterisks telling you, like, hey, this is a guess. So any word I try to say from this is going to be wildly different than what it likely was spoken as, but they can say, like, we know that this consonant cluster, for example, turns into this consonant cluster in modern Spanish, and they can trace it all the way back to Latin.

Angela 10:59

Would you say these are clusterfucks? Yes, or that this language is a clusterfuck.

Daniel 11:05

Yeah, I mean, language is absolutely a clusterfuck, the way that it works. But we do know that, for example, the Greek, Greek did not lose their word for bear, their original word for bear, nor did the romance language.

Angela 11:18

They weren't scared.

Daniel 11:20

No, the Greeks, their word is some their word is like Arctos, which is actually where we get Arctic and Antarctic.

Angela 11:27

Are the bear populations in Greece the same? I mean, like you would think about it. Maybe they didn't have as much of a bear problem as you might have had in some other parts of the world.

Daniel 11:35

The farther north you go, generally, is you're more likely to encounter grizzly bears or polar bears, which are the most those are the types of bears that will actually hunt humans.

Angela 11:46

I mean, they if you've ever heard like if you why why deadly?

Daniel 11:50

Yeah, but if you've ever heard there is a saying with bears, if it's black, fight back, if it's brown, lie down, if it's white, say goodnight.

Angela 11:58

Oh, so you mean you can't just like open, pick them up and hug them?

Daniel 12:03

Exactly. Stay away from bears. I mean, I have encountered bears in the wild and from hundreds of yards away, they're still terrifying. And they they're scared of you, they run away generally. It's but but it is not a they're not fun. They're terrifying, terrifying creatures.

Angela 12:19

I've never had that experience, and I don't think I wish to now.

Daniel 12:28

Yeah. So they are able to look at this Arctos in Greek or in Latin. It it had turned into Ursus by that time. But you know, if you've heard Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, that's actually they're called the they're bears in that they're named after a bear in in the actual.

Angela 12:44

Oh, so the Greeks went like ten toes down. Everyone else was like, shh, we don't speak of it. And they were like, fuck that.

Daniel 12:52

And so they do think that the original word for bear in Proto-Indo-European was something like erkto or herktos, maybe. And so there are people who've then taken that and applied the normal changes of Germanic language change, and they've tried to recreate what the word for bear at the time that they would have lost it was. And I saw there's like a bunch of people on Reddit, there's some linguists doing this stuff. Um, and it seems like a lot of people kind of assume that it would have turned into erhatz, maybe, or erts right before. So that would have been like the original word for bear.

Angela 13:29

These all sound like things that people said as the bear was like ripping their spine out.

Daniel 13:34

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

It's like I'm understanding the etymology of this word quite well. Thank you.

Daniel 13:49

But what's what's what I like the most is so they think it was like er hats or something like that, but that was hundreds, hundreds of years ago. And then people have then even taken the modern English changes to that and kind of said, like, what would the word for bear be if we had kept it and these people didn't see it as a cursed word and stop saying it back then? And the general consensus is that they would have reached modern English either as route, R-O-U-G-H-T, or as arth, a r-t-h. And I think the word arth is kind of cool. I like the word arth for bear, and it's like I kind of want to start calling bears arth.

Angela 14:27

But I like bears because then you get like cute little alliterations, like a baby bear. I clearly don't have like I I feel like um I've really considering I had no idea any of this backstory around bears, but I think I maybe need to touch some grass because I really love bears to me, are cute little fuzzy creatures.

Daniel 14:47

And um bears are nightmare.

Angela 14:50

Something got lost in the sauce for me. I'm trying to think of like city living equivalents, and I'm just trying not to get hit by a car on whacker. That's all I care about.

Daniel 15:01

Oh god. Maybe don't utter the word car as you're walking, just don't say it and they won't get you.

unknown 15:07

Yeah.

Daniel 15:08

Um, so okay. I do I also I love that bear, even though it replaced an old swear word. It is a four-letter word still, so it fits that nice little. I don't know why. It seems like swear words are mostly four-letter words. I've that I I looked into it, it just it seems like it's just kind of a coincidence.

Angela 15:23

Natural perfection.

Daniel 15:24

I mean, words often shorten through like normal language change smoothes words together, shortens, drops unnecessary sounds and stuff. So it makes sense that words get shorter and the words we use the most and persevere maybe just get shorter and shorter. But it is it is funny that like you know, you can call it a four-letter word and everyone knows what it means. It's like there's lots of four-letter words, but for some reason all our swear words are little four-letter words. But I like that bear fits cleanly into that as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yes.

Daniel 15:50

Um, but if bear gives us like like the old idea of like just any word can become cursed because it brings out danger. Um but that's just fear from it bringing forth something in the real world. You know, it's I said bear, it's gonna bring a bear. Bad idea. So, you know, you could say the same thing about like, don't say the word murderer, otherwise a murderer is gonna jump up and get you.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Right.

Daniel 16:11

But there are other square words that are taboo because of something divine or something from above. So let's talk about the word damn, which is like the most milked toast, like this is the word little kids say, no one even cares, and it's like, oh, whatever, it's hardly a square word. Beavers build them, and like and it's just it's just damn. But like if you think about it, damn is a really fucked up word to use. You're straight up like, like, oh, this minor inconvenience happened. I curse you to hell for all eternity. Like, it's very extreme, like zero to a hundred. Um, yeah. So I think it's interesting that such a power, like that's a strong word, and it became like our weakest little swear word for some reason.

Angela 16:51

Yeah. We're scared of bears, but we don't, but like, I curse you to the fires of hell.

Daniel 16:57

I mean, I do like truly, like your printer doesn't work, and you're like, I curse this wicked device.

Angela 17:05

May your bones be crushed beneath the heel of Satan himself.

Daniel 17:08

May you know nothing but eternities of damnation. Yeah. And so it's just like, I don't know. I I love that we take almost a harmless word, bear. I mean, it's the word itself is not harmless, but we add so much weight to it. And then we take like the most condemning word of all time, damn, like I will damn you to hell. And then it becomes like the one that truly, if a toddler says it, you're like, oh, watch the swears. But but damn come, I mean, shock to no one, damn does come from some old Latin words that mean condemn, penalty, loss, damage. Those words were damnum, demnare.

Angela 17:47

Oh my god. We should we need to revive Demnare. Like that sounds like that sounds like something from like Game of Thrones, like Demnare, and then like someone just like bursts into flames in front of you.

Daniel 18:00

Oh my god. Ugh, I love how we I love that like modern pop culture has made us hear Latin and think of like spooky spells and stuff.

Angela 18:09

Like, why do we why do we not all speak Latin all the time? Latin is the most badass language of all time. Like one of my friends speaks Latin and she helps me sometimes when I have to come up with Latin stuff for things I'm writing. And I can literally think, I need a really badass battle cry done. Or like, I need a beautiful way to say like to love and to cherish is like amaret coler. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it properly, but it's like so badass. It's such a badass language.

Daniel 18:38

Yeah. So there are these old Latin words, damnum, damnare. Um, you know, they weren't they were already for bad things, but then it made its way into Middle English, so as before modern English, like technically a different language, but the ancestor to modern English in the 1300s as dampnan. At that point, it did start to explicitly mean doomed to punishment. So it like entered Middle English already as just like this means to damn, essentially.

Angela 19:08

Well, that's lame. Can you imagine like being in a fight with someone and having the option to say damnare or dampman?

Daniel 19:14

Dampman Dampman really.

Angela 19:16

Well, and here's what I was thinking, go nasal, dampmen!

Daniel 19:20

I know. English is the nasaliest language, it dooms all to sound annoying.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, that's the cause. That's it, dango.

Daniel 19:27

I know, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

That's why you're annoying.

Daniel 19:29

Hey, you should hear me podcast in Spanish.

Angela 19:34

Ooh, is that an idea? What's like um wait, Span-ish? That's coming, coming soon to a Spotify in your news. Uh Span-ish. Span-ish. But you'd be teaching me, and that would be where the ish comes in because I would just like fuck it all up royally. You'd be like, hola, and I'd be like, holla. So it'd be Span-ish for me.

Daniel 19:55

Oh Lord, yes. Oh, okay. Dampnen, like I was saying, normal language change just kind of drops unnecessary sounds. So Dampnen got rid of the P and that final E N sound went from Dampnen, Dampnen, Damp, Nam, Damn Damp, and just became damn over you know centuries of change. And then it pretty much officially it's found in the Bible at that point. Christians are using it to say it means punishment from God. And so it really did start to be like it was it was one of the worst words in the English language. It was saying, God is going to punish you for all eternity. I, you know, your your soul is being condemned to hell.

Angela 20:33

Once again, are we sure about this guy?

Daniel 20:37

Yeah.

Angela 20:38

Not to open a can of worms, but are we sure?

Daniel 20:42

But I mean, yeah, it's like an eternal punishment. It is a word that means truly eternal punishment. And then people started saying that, taking that force and saying, I'm gonna say that to you, or I'm gonna say that to this thing that's annoying me. And it seems very natural, like we wanna usurp the power of the divine, and how else to do it but through divine language, right? So, I mean, it's pretty straightforward, but it is like we we see how that happens. Is it's not even a bad word, it is a word of power, and then people start to use that power in their own way, or try, you know, that I don't think they were actually damning people. I don't think back in the day someone said, dampen you, and then they were like, Oh shit, this actually works.

Angela 21:22

You know, they just like fell through the ground.

Daniel 21:24

But people are good at drawing caught. I mean, people thought saying the word bear brought bears about. I mean, it was just that you're in the forest, you're probably saying, Is that a bear? And then a bear comes.

Angela 21:33

Yeah, it happened twice.

unknown 21:35

Yeah.

Daniel 21:36

And then same thing with damnation. It's like someone's like, Oh, god damn this, and then maybe the next day, coincidentally, something bad happens, you start to think, oh shit, that actually did something. So there's always like this weird game that people are doing with language, and I think damn is a good example of that, where it's like we took the most powerful word and we have absolutely neutered it. Essentially, there is darn, but like damn and darn are almost on the same level at this point.

Angela 21:59

Dang. I feel like When I'm trying to say damn, I'm like, oh dang it, you know.

Daniel 22:03

But like, do you think of damn as an actual curse word?

Angela 22:07

Um, I do feel like, and maybe this is my I know I've said some flagrant things, but my religious upbringing, I feel like when I say like goddamn, I feel that groty little feeling in the pit of my stomach, like, don't say that. Or like, um, just I don't even know if it's as prevalent in my lexicon because you're right, like it doesn't feel super powerful. I'm also a real F bombdropper. Yeah, I don't really think about it that much. Maybe I might it might be one of those things where I say it a lot more than I think I do, and I just don't even think about it. I feel like it comes in when I'm being sarcastic, like I'll be like, oh damn.

Daniel 22:43

Yeah, it's it definitely does not when you're actually angry, you go to fuck.

Angela 22:47

Yeah. Yeah. It's not my punch packer.

Daniel 22:50

But if you really think about it, like of all the swear words, it is kind of the harshest.

Angela 22:55

It's funny because like if like a partner or if someone that I respected said fuck you to me, I would be like, Oh, you've crossed a line. But if someone said damn you, um, and I prefer to be fucked much more than I prefer to be damned.

Daniel 23:09

So But yeah, literally, if someone says damn you, I would like water off a duck's back, wouldn't even not even water, air off a duck's back, wouldn't even think about it. And it's like, uh, they really did just like straight up say they want me to be tortured for eternity.

Angela 23:23

They went all in on that one. Yeah. Like, have you ever heard a thing or two about hell? It's not cool.

Daniel 23:29

It's just it it I do love how it's like zero to a hundred, and it's like our our most childish swear word is actually the most like biblically extreme.

unknown 23:39

Yeah.

Daniel 23:40

But if we're talking about extreme swear words, we do need to talk about I mean, the king of swear words is the F word, right?

Angela 23:47

I mean it's literally in the acronym, right? It's the king.

Daniel 23:51

Oh, okay. I'm going to bring this up. So tell me what you think what what you've heard fuck means.

Angela 23:58

Oh, I feel like every middle schooler goes through a phase where they learn that it means fornication under consent of the king.

Daniel 24:03

Mm-hmm. And like that has was like that has taken hold in your mind as what it actually is.

Angela 24:09

Oh, is that not real?

Daniel 24:10

No, that is not what it is. So there that's a an urban legend. I I remember hearing that as a kid as well. There's also people who say it was a punishment, so there were people who got caught um adulterers, they would have F-U-C-K written above them as they were in stocks for for unlawful carnal knowledge.

unknown 24:30

Oh.

Daniel 24:30

So the idea was that adulterers would have fuck written above them in their stocks, or the idea was for our fornication under consent of the king was a sign you would put outside of your bedquarters when you were legally having sex during a time when the king was restricting who could procreate, essentially. Both of those are just nonsense.

Angela 24:49

Those are just I was gonna say, what a time.

Daniel 24:53

Yeah, right. Um, but the but like, yeah, I remember hearing these and they make sense. I mean, we all know like okay, like May Day was a made-up word.

Angela 25:01

Like lots of things ran to the I don't know what you're talking about for each of these. Sounds like a podcast coming down the line.

Daniel 25:07

Yes, we could we could discuss all of these, but okay comes Empire grows, the empire builds. Okay was originally like a funny misspelling of all correct, like instead of A-L-L-C-O-R-R-E-C-T, it was all O L L correct with a K. So it was okay.

Angela 25:26

Okay, that's kind of hilarious. And it's like, how did that gain enough strength to become an entire well?

Daniel 25:32

Because on top of that, there was a political save it for the podcast. Okay, five, but there is there is a reason. There's another reason okay is okay, but anyway, but also so okay is that mayday, for example, is just a made-up word that they that sounds like French, may you day help me. So it's just like a universal word for help. Mayday, may day. Yeah. So words often are just like made into the language. It's not un it's not unreasonable to think fuck could have come that way. But what it actually is, linguists have looked at it. There is actual root words they can.

Angela 26:04

Oh, I would love to punch a clock to just research the word fuck.

Daniel 26:07

I know, right? What a fucking thing.

Angela 26:08

Are we doing any kind of practical research?

Daniel 26:15

That's that's in the uh that's in the practical studies, not the linguistic studies. You you went down the wrong the wrong science track if you want the practical studies.

Angela 26:25

Well, I'm just trying to have it a good day at work.

Daniel 26:28

So we're not exactly a hundred percent sure of the root word for fuck in English. We do know that there are similar like cousin words that likely came from the same original root word in other Germanic languages. Um, there are words like ficken, fachen, fach, faca, fuka. They all circle around this idea of like hitting things or thrusting or moving back and forth or sexual activity. So you can see where like there was this old Germanic word, something like fuck on, that probably had to do with moving something in or out or back and forth. Obviously, people started to use it to talk about sex. And then eventually, by the time it was in like modern English, it basically just meant sex at that time. It could have also meant for that motion, but like that motion only in reference to sex generally. One of the earliest recorded uses of it is from this court document in Cheshire, England in 1310. It's a list of people who had like arrest warrants out, essentially. And one of the guys on this list, his name, they think this was like a tongue-in-cheek joke about the guy or a reference to the crime he committed, and his name was listed as Roger, fuck by the Navel. What? Yes, Roger, fuck by the Navel. So they think either he was like someone who was so dumb that he thought that's how sex worked.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

What? Roger, you sick fuck!

Daniel 28:04

But that's like the earliest known use of fuck in the English language.

Angela 28:09

Oh my god, like hilarious. Okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna scroll for five seconds. Um, there is a book called Some, and each chapter the author writes a short story of like what he imagines the afterlife could be. And one of them is like you're basically I'm a I imagine it in my head as like you're basically in like an AA meeting where everyone's like sitting in folding chairs and there's like stale donuts and like gross coffee, and you're just like milling around and you're stuck in that room until your name is spoken for the last time. Yeah. And like you're finally forgotten. And so, like, like the kind of like joke in the story, I remember it like was like, yeah, the like ancient Roman warrior who like biffed it up in in the battle will like just forever have to like hear people talking about this mistake they made. So can you imagine if you're sitting there in that room, like chomping away at your groate old donut you're so sick of, and someone's like, Roger fucks us, like what was it? Roger fucks up the navel or something.

Daniel 29:11

Fuck by the navel.

Angela 29:12

Fuck by the navel, and you're like, yeah, one time I will fuck with the. One time. And like some girl just like yapped in town and wouldn't let it go. And so, like, and he's just sitting there like crunching his cyrophunk in his hand, like, one fucking time, and he cannot move on.

Daniel 29:33

I choose to believe it's making fun of him and not the crime he committed because it's not fun. Yeah.

Angela 29:38

I know how humans work, I know how we work. We've we never change.

Daniel 29:42

Yeah. So it seems very likely that this was an intentional use of the word fuck to mean some sort of reference to sex. That's 1310. That's a legal document in Cheshire, England. That was like official, official.

Angela 29:54

Oh yeah. I'm surprised it doesn't originate at any well, I guess you said it doesn't really go back to Roman times because they were the most horny.

Daniel 30:02

Yeah. No, no. I mean, I mean copulation comes from Latin. Yeah, and like I think sex is a Latin word. So yeah, we get, I mean, we get lots of words from Latin, but but fuck is a Germanic root. It's it's a classic English swear. Classic. There are also references also in the 1300s to a place called Fucking Grove.

Angela 30:23

Which is it still open?

Daniel 30:27

Or what happens in Fucking Grove stays in Fucking Grove.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

The original Las Vegas.

Daniel 30:32

Yeah. Um, by the 1700s, it was definitely had become taboo. It was being left out of dictionaries, and it's kind of crazy that this word has been around for so long, but is also so popular. It's crazy that it hasn't fallen out of favor with another swear, with another, you know, another slang term for like it is too, it's just too perfect.

Angela 30:52

It's such a good word.

Daniel 30:53

And and that's so what is it about?

Angela 30:55

We've honed it. We've honed it.

Daniel 30:57

And and that's one thing is we have made it remark it is like the most versatile word in the English language. It can be it, it it's like no word other than fuck can be a verb, both transitive and intransitive. It can be an adjective, it can be an adverb, it can be a noun, it's an interjection, it is a no other words take on all these different parts of speech. So it's really funny that like it is a perfect word. Yeah, it's like the the the dirtiest swear word is like the most versatile, uh, and it is one of the longest standing, and it it helps us express all of our emotions. You use it for pain, shock, amazement, admiration, contempt, intensity, despair, sex, uh yeah, aggression, love, hate. It's just like every I mean, truly imagine a feeling you can't use the word fuck as part of the description of. You can't. So it it really, I mean, it has become just like the absolute multi-tool of the English language. And I can't I mean, I resent a little bit that it is so dirty, like, or like so like there are people who stra like it is the F-word to some people. They don't even say fuck. You know? Right. And that to me is a little crazy.

Angela 32:09

I mean I Little Chaches. Come on.

Daniel 32:12

I mean, I think it'd be I think it is because it has to do with sex. Like, damn, you're able to look past like the biblicalness of it, I think.

Angela 32:20

But really, most people are still so at their core uncomfortable about sex that the word makes you think of sex even if you use it in a non-sexual way that's like I think there's something to it that like sometimes the F-word, um, for some people it carries a little bit because like you can use it in anger, you can use it so I think some of it is a little bit of like it never really bothers me when people say it, but I like I had a consultation for like a doctor appointment thing. Um, and the doctor said the F word a few times in it and I didn't really care. But like it was one of those things where each time I was a little bit like and like But like I don't care.

Daniel 32:58

Yeah, I agree. I would I wouldn't care either, but I would be like, Oh, it's weird that a doctor would do that because I know some people do care. And it's weird to me that they wouldn't take that into account.

Angela 33:08

Yeah, but also like you're like in a setting where you're not expecting to hear a word that carries any incendiary qualities, I suppose. And like um, but I mean it didn't like I wasn't like upset about it, and it Yeah, and like I mean I have always been in typical corporate roles or whatever. And I remember when I first started my career being like, oh my god, how am I gonna like clean this out of my vocabulary, just like swearing or whatever. And oh honey, let me tell you. Um I say the F-word at work as much as the next person, and the next person says it a lot.

Daniel 33:41

So I've worked in live TV. If you aren't able to swear in a control room when shit is fucked up, you would lose your mind. You need to like I yeah, and I mean it would it was just like par for the course to be able to do it.

Angela 33:53

But like I wouldn't be on a call with a team of people leading it and dropping F bombs. Like, that's like when you're in your one-on-one conversations. That's like when you're in the behind the closed doors and you're just having like a one-on-one with something, you're like, this is so fucked up. What the fuck is going on? Like, but I would never be like, all right, team, we fucked up. Like I would never say something like that.

Daniel 34:15

Well, let's one thing like the actual sound itself has qualities that are inherent regardless of the meaning humans put on it. There are certain sounds that people just feel a certain way about. There is this study, they did this thing, it's called the Kiki and Boba experiment. It's one of my favorite you know about Kiki and Boba?

Angela 34:35

Some I literally was just uh chronically online, and someone was talking about Kiki and Boba, and they didn't explain it, and so I was like, what the fuck does Kiki and Boba mean? But I thought it was hilarious.

Daniel 34:48

No joke, if I ever get pets again, I may I'm naming them Kiki and Boba. Those are my next pet names. Oh my god.

Angela 34:54

I I was like researching it a little bit, and then I was like in one of those brain melt moments where I was like, no, but okay, that's so funny that this like came back around so fast.

Daniel 35:03

Okay, so you already have heard of Kiki and Boba, but I will quickly explain for anyone listening who hasn't heard of it. It's this experiment that some linguists or psychologists did where they took people of different native languages and they said to them, Here are two shapes. And they gave them two different shapes. One was more pointy and one was more blobby, and they said, You have two names, Kiki and Boba. You have to name these two uh shapes. And an overwhelming number of people name the sharp pointy object Kiki, and they name the the wavy bubbly object boba. So there's something about the k sound that makes us think harsh, sharp, and then there's something about the b sound that makes us think like ooh, flowy and fun, like loose. So fuck is absolutely like it has a ph at the beginning and then the the end of the cut. Absolutely there. It's like a word with just inherent like charisma, I guess.

Angela 35:56

And then when I think let's have a kiki, I think about sex. So, well not like sex per se, but like you know, just uh hedonism, yeah. The vibe. I love hedonism is oh hedonism, yeah, what an amazing concept.

Daniel 36:12

Yep.

Angela 36:13

And like bacchanalia.

Daniel 36:15

You ever heard of this thing? Unmitigated pleasure? You should look into it.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Oh, I'll look into it.

Daniel 36:26

You know what I love is a concept, pleasure.

Angela 36:29

Pleasure, pleasure. Yeah. But like the word though is gross. Like when you say like p like pleasuring someone is like, like whenever someone talks about pleasure in a non-sexual setting, I immediately gives me like like it gives me the ick so bad it's like, like, it's like, oh, doing this for work or for pleasure. I'm like, I don't want to talk about the things I do for pleasure.

Daniel 36:49

Pleasure is definitely like moist in one of those words that it's just like reality.

Angela 36:54

Oh god. Do you think anybody listening to this wants us to damn straight off to hell right now?

Daniel 37:02

For sure. I guess okay. My final point about fuck. I have one more concept about fuck that is interesting to me. Okay. And I it applies to most swear words, but I feel like fuck is the one. I mean, it starts with the fact that you can say the F-word. There is a euphemism we all know for it. But even that, you can censor it, you can bleep it, you can put asterisks over it. And people still know what word, like what that word is. So there's no escaping it. Like that is the thing about it. You can do your best to sanitize it out of our language. But if you see asterisk, pound sign, exclamation, number, yeah, you know that it means fuck. And it's just like, what can you do? You cannot escape it. It is officially, I I mean, no matter what we do, it is stuck in our language, and it is it is like a cornerstone of our language, no matter how much people don't really like it. And to me, that's kind of like the real curse of it is it's like, I am here, I'm here, I'm queer. No, I am here and I'm not going anywhere.

unknown 37:59

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Yeah.

Daniel 38:01

So I mean, that's just sort of to me is like this there's this constant play between the words we shouldn't say, like the words that you wouldn't say in front of your grandma unless you want her to be judging you like in this life and the next. But it's like, I don't know. But there's also like language would be so boring without them.

Angela 38:17

Oh yeah. My brother, like, never swears, and I'm always like, how do you express yourself? When I have I mean, like, my brother's not boring, and when I have conversations with him, it's by like it's a fun time and everything. But we were he was texting me the other day, and I was like, This is the fucking driest text I've gotten in my entire life. Like, how did this man get someone to marry him on these texting abilities? Like, literally, he is so dry in his texts, and I'm like, uh, so maybe he does need to work on that.

Daniel 38:53

Well, I am a noted dry texter as well because I over annoyed.

Angela 38:59

No, like it's it's a whole different thing of just like yes, no, I was there. I was literally like, I was like, Did you well I guess it's not a big deal. We were talking about New Orleans because I'm going to New Orleans soon, and he was recently there, and I was like, Oh, like, like, I'm going, like, do you have any recommendations? And he just goes, I can't recall. And I was like, Okay. And then um, I was like, because he's a pilot, so I was like, Oh, are you maybe gonna be there? And he was just like, I'll be in a camper. Like, it's just like the baddest thing ever. I'm like, okay, like if he wasn't my brother and he wasn't stuck with me for life, I would be like, I don't know if this guy likes me. You know what?

Daniel 39:36

I appreciate the people flying my planes to have a steady disposition. I'm I I'm fine with that. If pilots wanna be, if pilots want to have the cleanest little mouth, so they always are communicating well, and uh, we are about to be at the feet and uh I'm not gonna swear because I don't have a potty mouth, I'm fine with that.

Angela 39:52

All the time I like his like, and we're uh coming into uh and I made fun of him before, but then my parents flew one of his flights and my mom was like recording the whole thing, and so can confirm it's very like and the tailwind is gonna be kicking up a little bit in the back end and we'll have a little bit of turbulence, but uh we'll get you there on time.

Daniel 40:11

Could you imagine if your pilot was like, ah, we got some goddamn shit going on back then? I don't know what the fuck we're gonna do, but we'll make it fine, I think.

Angela 40:19

Hey guys, uh my original flight plan I got all fucked up part way through. So uh we're gonna uh dip around, do some shit, fuck it all into place. And uh I'll get you there on time, rest assured.

Daniel 40:33

I've been convinced we need more balance with swearing. I used to be pro swear- I'm pro I'm still pro-swearing, but maybe there is a time and a place for everything.

Angela 40:42

I don't know. I think I might appreciate that because I fly so much that I honestly I'm I like never pay attention to the they they literally could be like, this plane is currently in free fall towards the ground, and I would like have my ear pods in and be like, fucking Wi-Fi bleeping out right now. Like I would just be on my own.

Daniel 40:59

Could the true curse of a cursed word be that you use it and people think less of you?

Angela 41:07

That's deep. Um I bet there are.

Daniel 41:11

I don't want to think about it because I don't want to give up swearing.

Angela 41:13

I guarantee that there are cases where someone has sworn and had like serious repercussions, whether being fired for a job or like lost opportunities for things because they either swore too much. So, yes, I think that is a really interesting angle to the accursiveness of curse words. But I think it would be a curse to not have them because then we'd just be milk to us.

Daniel 41:35

I mean, it's truly swearing. If we're talking about swearing, like it curses you because someone doesn't like hearing it. Cursing is also a way to like ingratiate yourself to people, to level set, to like make yourself more real with people, I feel like.

Angela 41:47

Yes, which was I think what was happening when I was at the doctor.

Daniel 41:50

Yeah. Maybe that was a swing and a miss, but you know, can't can't.

Angela 41:54

I would probably just I just had to stick up my ass that day.

Daniel 41:57

Um, a three-letter swear word. Oh actually, no, four letters if you it's the original British. I was gonna do a whole thing on ars.

Angela 42:04

Do we need a part two?

Daniel 42:07

Hey, don't tempt me with a good time.

Angela 42:08

No, seriously, like we could we could do it, not not anytime soon.

Daniel 42:12

Yeah, we'll do we'll we'll have some more swear words. I mean one day we'll I mean there's lots of there's lots of words that are cursed in our language.

Angela 42:18

Join us for the Ish Media Empire. You'll never stop hearing from us.

Daniel 42:23

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, truly, I guess when it comes to cursed words, it's like maybe our whole language is a little cursed if you know anything can become a curse word just by being afraid of it enough.

Angela 42:36

Yeah, I mean, maybe cursed, maybe not. I guess we'll see you next Tuesday. Just kidding.

Daniel 42:45

We'll see you next week.

Angela 42:46

See you next Wednesday.

Daniel 42:56

Cursedish is an ish media production. It explores stories of alleged curses, historical mysteries, and supernatural claims. While we do investigate the history and the evidence behind these stories, ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe. If you have questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share, send us a hex at uh oh at curstish.com. That's uh oh h all one word at cursedish all one word.com