Originally posted 2016-09-30 11:58:17.
Well, it’s been a fucker of a week, folks. I split up with my girlfriend. That train had already signalled its impending departure though. Also in the Philippines, the Half-Wit Prince has announced his intention to emulate Hitler and murder three million citizens. Hilary Clinton looks likely to be the next President of the Land of Fuckwit, which means we’ll probably celebrate the turn of the decade from a nuclear shelter. In the UK, Auntie Tess is now showing that she couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. In France, full denial has broken out as, after all, one must never offend the Islamic rapists and child-shaggers — in case they take the huff and murder another 100 or so innocent people. And in the latest US-inspired human tragedy, Syria, the body count rises. So I thought I’d do a piece about cursing and swearing.
Because cursing and swearing is something I feel like doing a lot of, right now.
Cursing and swearing is one of the great underestimated expressions of human emotion. People ban it; they pretend they don’t do it and hector those who do. They lecture — or worse — their children for the mildest of ‘profanities’ — and what’s with that anyway? Why is it profane to say, for example, ‘fuck’? I mean, with no fucking there would be no children.
A good fuck.
Me, I like a good fuck. In fact I like a good fuck several times a day, to be honest. I don’t always get to but I like it when I do. So what’s wrong with using this word, which after all, describes one of the most beautiful — if not the most beautiful — things two (or more) humans can do together? So why is it ‘cursing and swearing’?
Well it turns out that ‘fuck’ entered English in the 15th century, possibly via Scotland, from German. It meant ‘to strike’. In its early days it doesn’t seem to have been regarded as offensive, but when it acquired the connotation of sexual penetration, it did.
So this is all about Anglo-Saxon prudishness about sex. It’s probably also why Scottish and Irish people seem so gleefully inclined to use it a lot — it upsets the English. And we all enjoy doing that. What’s that you say at the back there? It’s because USicans are fucked in the head and they control the media? Never a truer word spoken. After all, that is a culture where fathers have their son’s cocks fucked-up so they can never really enjoy a good wank.
Same goes for ‘cunt’. All my life I have been told how offensive this word was and, worse, how demeaning to women it is. In fact I was so taken in by this utter bullshit that I was actually shocked when a girlfriend, whose genitalia I was most happy to be welcomed into on a daily basis, referred to her organ of pleasure as her ‘cunt’. And she was shocked that I was shocked. ‘It’s my cunt,’ she said. ‘What the fuck do you expect me to call it?’
Cunt in Ancient Sumer.
Now I just checked and the word ‘cunt’ is actually one of the oldest in English. It comes from ancient Sumer, which I wrote about in Why Men Made God and which, by the way, you owe yourself a copy of.
The root, ‘kunta’ means ‘female genitalia’ in Sumerian and this same root gives us the name of the writing they invented, ‘cuneiform’. According to this excellent site, since this writing was invented by the priestesses of the Goddess in the form of Inanna, so ‘cuneiform’ means ‘signs of the women.’
The sound ‘ku’ is often represented by the letter ‘q’ and so, guess what, ‘cunt’ is the root of Queen. (I am not saying anything at all about the current twat-in-residence of Windsor Palace, Queen Elizabeth the First — she’s only the second to the English — you understand.)
Cunt is everywhere.
Kunta is also ‘the root of kundalini (energy), khan (highest leader of the Eurasian steppe nomads, whose society was originally matriarchal and who still have remnants of a matriarchate), quantity and, in fact any words that start with “kw”, qu, or kh.’ So we are literally surrounded by cunt all the time — yet it’s naughty to say it.
These words include ‘Cunda, mother of Buddha according to Japanese; Cunti-Devi, Goddess of kundalini energy, India; Kunta, means literally one who has female genitalia, and describes a priestess, ancient Sumeria; Kun, Goddess of Mercy, India; Quani, Korean goddess; Qudshu, female priestess of ancient Canaan & Phoenicia, which became the Roman province of Palestine after they conquered it; Quadesha, Sumerian word for a type of priestess. ‘Qu’ can also mean love, sensuality, sexuality, the divinity present in all females.’ (link)
‘Kunta means ‘woman’ in many near eastern and African languages and may be the oldest term for ‘woman’ that exists. So calling a woman ‘cunt’ seems at worst tautologous. But of course, the real insult is in calling a man a ‘cunt’.
The reason ‘cunt’ is regarded as offensive is that, when applied to a man, it suggests he is actually a woman — and that , in the patriarchy is the gravest insult of all. Well, fuck the patriarchy, they’re a royal bunch of cunts anyway.
About pricks.
So what about the less extreme swearing and cursing? What about ‘prick,’ for example? Well, here I can do no better than Dictionary Central, which notes
‘ The earliest record of (prick’s) use for ‘penis’ is from the late 16th century, and in the 16th and 17th centuries women employed it as a term of endearment – a usage which did not go down well in all quarters: ‘One word alone hath troubled some, because the immodest maid soothing the young man, calls him her Prick. He who cannot away with this, instead of “my Prick”, let him write “my Sweetheart”,’ H M, Colloquies of Erasmus 1671.’
So in the beginning, ‘prick’ was a term of affection, not offence. Well there you go and I will reconsider its use. While we’re on the subject of endearment, the term ‘tart’, originally Scottish, was also such; it was a compliment. The word ‘cock’ — my preferred familiar for the organ of pleasure — arrived in the 17th century. Its meaning, as an alternative for ‘prick’, seems to be related to its use for a spigot or tap, e.g. ‘water-cock’. So it’s not so much directly sexual but refers to the male organ for pissing.
Cutting off boy’s cocks.
USicans, however, know none of this; it’s a nation that routinely cuts off parts of little boys’ pricks so they’ll masturbate less, and is so prudish that it calls a ‘cock’ a ‘rooster’ (are you fucking kidding?) It has introduced anodyne euphemisms like ‘shutoff valve’ and ‘float valve’ as substitutes for the robust Anglo-Saxon terms ‘stop-cock’ and ‘ball-cock’ (and how I love that one.) And as for the ghastly ‘locked’ (and loaded) instead of ‘cocked’ — I despair. But they’re Septic Tankers and we know what that rhymes with, don’t we? It’s enough to make one start cursing and swearing.
Well, folks, the word ‘wank’ has existed in Scotland since at least the 18th century, where it meant ‘a repetitive motion’. I know this because my former home, now the residence of my ex, was described as a ‘wank-mill’ in the original titles. This referred to the motion of the machinery which was used to process flax there. Sometime in the mid 20th century this became ‘plash-mill’ and so, Plashmill Press. Now you know. I mean I may be gallus but calling a company ‘WankMill Press’ was just a little too avant-garde even for me.
Wanking, jerking and choking chickens.
Since the 1940s, however, wanker, in the repertoire of cursing and swearing, has come to mean ‘a male who masturbates.’ This gives us the verb ‘to wank’ and myriad offshoots like ‘whang’ and so on. But just why wanking should be a term of abuse is mysterious. After all, everybody does it, including those of us in relationships. I really like a mutual crack-off session with my girlfriend; so chummy. And you can even do it on the phone. I mean over the phone. I mean…oh you fucking well know what I mean.
Now the word ‘whore’ — which is pronounced to rhyme with ‘poor’ not ‘door,’ for fucksake — comes from Islam. Yes our old friend the religion of ‘submit or we’ll kill you, fuckers.’ In the seventh Heaven, which is the highest (but no cunt has ever actually found it,) the Muslim warrior (male) who dies in jihad will enjoy the services, for eternity, of 72 perpetual virgins called ‘houris‘. So when you call someone a ‘whore’ you’re saying she is a nun who resides in Heaven and sucks Muslim cock. You might remember that.
Cursing and swearing are not the same.
I think people should be aware that cursing and swearing are not really the same. Cursing suggests a malign ill-will towards another; for example, ‘God damn and blast your eyes you fucking godforsaken wanker,’ as one might refer to the jerk who just stole the parking space you were waiting for.
This is qualitatively different from ‘Oh fuckety fuckety fuck fuck for fuck’s sake,’ as you might say when, for example, being repeatedly frustrated in your efforts to stop the ball-cock in the crapper from leaking. The latter has no sense of personal malice.
USicunt swearing.
USicunts have a range of cursing and swearing that seems, on the face of it, deeply offensive and at the same time weirdly meaningless. So no surprise. ‘Motherfucker’, for example; does this mean ‘one who fucks his own mother’ or ‘one who fucks someone else’s mother’?
The former clearly has Biblical precedent. So USicunts, with their famously head-up-the arse attitude to flying fart-spotting, should have no problems. After all, who the Hell do you think Cain and Abel were fucking? That cunt Eve, of course. I mean if they were just wanking or indulging in incestuous buggery, where did all the humans come from?
And by the way, USicunts, arse comes from German ‘Arschloch’, meaning ‘arsehole’ by the way, so it is ‘arse’ and not ‘ass’. An ass is like a donkey only bigger. Oh, you think it’s rude to say ‘arse’? Fuck you.
How it all began — fucking that twat Eve.
If you don’t think Cain and Abel were fucking their mother, then you have some bastard explaining to do. Oh, they were fucking their sisters? Fuck me, you religious twats have it all covered, don’t you? (Twat — meaning female genitalia, though it might have originally meant ‘a piece of land’ — was immortalised by Robert Browning, after he misread ‘Vanity of Vanities,’ a poem of 1660: ‘They’d talk’t of his having a Cardinalls Hat,/They’d send him as soon an Old Nun’s Twat.’)
But anyway, IIRC, ‘sistershagger’, while less common than ‘motherfucker’ remains an insult. Well then again, my sister…she’d make a fucking saint start cursing and swearing.
That reminds me of a tale wherein a policeman came across an amorous couple fucking like bunnies on a park bench. ”Ere, ‘ere,’ quoth Plod, ‘You can’t be doin’ that there.’ At which point the tart, doubtless on the point of requiring close communication with several deities, went off her bloody nut; she started calling the copper for all the cunts under the sun. He thought about it and then said to her lusty young prick, ‘You’re under arrest.’ The whang asked, ‘What for, I never said a bloody word;’ to which the copper replied, ‘I am arrestin’ yew for ‘avin an offensive person on your weapon’.
Hohoho.
And if we are talking about fucking somebody else’s mother, what’s with that? Jealousy? Maybe she’s hot. I fucked plenty of people’s mothers plenty of times and it was all very nice thank you very much.
Cocksucker
Just as confusing is ‘cocksucker’. Now I don’t know about you, but I have a cock and I really like having it sucked. So if I called my darling (ex) girlfriend a ‘cocksucker’, it would be a heartfelt expression of endearment, not to mention my overwhelming gratitude not only for her talents in that direction, which are prodigious, but for the frequency with which she demonstrates them. So its use as a profanity seems odd.
Now about the ‘B’ words.
The first two that come to mind are ‘bastard’ and ‘bugger’. Bastard just means ‘a person whose parents were not married’ and in this secular age is, frankly, meaningless. It does form a useful complement to other cursing and swearing. For example, ‘bastard cunt’ as you might say when trying to lift a very heavy thing, or ‘what a bastard’ after a bad day at the office. I once scared the shit out of a younger colleague who had been irritating me, and not a few others, by adopting my best Scottish growl and telling him, ‘No, A’m no a nice guy, A’m a right bastard.’ He was good as gold after that.
Bugger, buggery and buggering.
The other great ‘B’ word, in the art of cursing and swearing, is ‘bugger’. But this is about as shite-brained as ‘fuck.’ I mean, just as everyone likes a good fuck, I can sure you that buggering — which is the act of fucking someone in the arse — is as lovely an experience as it gets. If fucking — the act of sticking cock in cunt — is the AOC of meating, then buggering is the grand cru.
(Being the recipient is not to everyone’s taste, but I am assured by those for whom it is, that it is the crème de la crème of sex; and what would we stalwart buggers do without their sweet little arseholes to stretch?)
So how the fuck it became a swearword I haven’t a clue. The people who make up these things must not know whether their arses are punched, bored or countersunk.
A great deal of cursing and swearing is not really the use of ‘bad words’ — which all seem to do with either being a woman or having sex — at all. It’s technically blasphemy, which is, to recap, taking the (invented) name of a (non-existent) deity ‘in vain’. In other words, it is being distasteful by using a word that literally means nothing at all.
Jesus Christ
So ‘Jesus Christ wept tears of blood’ isn’t really cursing and swearing. While on the subject of ‘blood’ by the way, this gives us ‘bloody’. In my youth bloody was still considered a high-level offence word. Today, bloody is everywhere, Septics are nonplussed and Ozzies use it like the Irish sod-hoppers say ‘fuck’. It has been around for hundreds of years and nobody seems to know why it is offensive, except that there is a possible connection with menstruation and this is, lest we forget, the patriarchy, where all things female are offensive.
But back to blasphemy. The simplest blasphemies are just ejaculations (see what I did there) like ‘God! ‘ or ‘Jesus!’ which makes me wonder whether Moozies shout ‘Allah!’ at similar moments. Or what about Buddhists? Hindus, when they are about to blow their stack, do they yell ‘Hare fucking Krishna’? Of course, they are polytheistic, so the girls don’t have to blaspheme a male deity, they can use a goddess — ‘Parvati!’ or ‘Ohohohoh my KALI!’
All in all, though, I don’t see what the big deal is. Cursing, swearing and blaspheming seem perfectly natural expression of emotion and not to be damned. With a little bit of creativity they can even be fucking poetic.