Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Bad language? Jargon, slang, swearing and insult 81
instance, (3) shows that learned words for SMD organs and effluvia generally
do not function in this way, but nor do certain mild obscenities and nursery
terms such as those in (4).
3. * Defecate on you! * Urine off! * You anus! * You vagina! * You clitoris!
* * * *
You penis! You foreskin! You faeces! He’s a real fornicating vagina!
4. * You poontang! * You quim! 58 * You willie! * Wee-wee on you!
However, this constraint does not apply to all such terms in early modern
English:
A horson filthie slaue, a dunge-worme, an excrement! (Jonson 1981, Everyman in His
Humour, III.v.127)
Nor does it apply to terms of insult that comment on sexual persuasion,
perversion or practice; presumably because the words used in the insult are
intended to be taken literally instead of figuratively (even when this is known
not to be the case in reality). Thus it is just as insulting to call someone a
penis-sucker as a cock-sucker (even if the latter is the norm); the same is true
of masturbator vs wanker, behind-licker vs arse-licker, fornicator vs fucker,
homosexual vs poofter, and prostitute vs whore. It is true that the slang term is
more vivid, and probably more effective, as an insult; but the alternative will
also work well enough – especially as a euphemistic dysphemism that may
appear to satisfy the middle-class politeness criterion. When terms like
wanker and fucker are used figuratively (respectively ‘despised and ineffectual’
and ‘despised, strongly condemned’), the more orthophemistic alternatives
are inappropriate. Although attitudes to homosexuality have changed
towards the positive in recent years, it is still an effective insult to accuse a
man of sexual dalliance with other men. The ubiquitous North American
malediction it sucks ‘it is contemptible’ is, in origin, a transference from the
negativity in the homophobic jibe he sucks (cock), that has lost the link with
its past in most users’ minds (rather like have someone by the short and
curlies); as a result, both he sucks and she sucks can be used without fellatio
coming to mind. (To accuse someone of being a sucker ‘easily deceived,
manipulated’ is more innocently derived from the suckling of a neonate.)
Sadly, the long history of (men and women) insulting women by accusing
them of promiscuity or prostitution seems to persist, despite a generation or
two of feminism.
Dysphemistic epithets that pick on real physical characteristics that are
treated as though they are abnormalities, like Fatty!, Baldy!, Four-eyes!,
Short-arse!. Epithets like these merge into racist dysphemisms and dysphemistic
epithets based on behaviours that the speaker disapproves of, such as