I have long thought that English no longer has has words with any real force or power to them. Overuse has deadened the ones the language had.
it’s not that I would choose to use them. I’ve always thought them a substitute for thought. Using the same standard words to express anger, frustration, or even bewilderment seems to indicate the lack of adequate vocabulary.
My great-grandfather never used a curse word. He was a sea-captain, and in the 1860’s, piloting a sailboat around Bermuda, he realized the stiff breeze was bringing them to an overhanging bridge too quickly. He called to his mate, “By the great and shining star of heaven, Nathaniel, lower that sail!” By that time, of course, the wind had smashed them into the bridge, before Nathaniel had a chance to lower the sail and unstep the mast.
I admire the grandeur of his command, but it’s clear a shorter epithet would have been more helpful.
My father ran away to sea at twelve, and later became a Master Mariner. A lifetime on board ships, in the US Navy during WWII, followed by a career as captain of merchant ships, gave him a sailor’s vocabulary.
As a young child, I noticed that it didn’t seem possible for him to finish a sentence without using the words “damn” and “hell.” They seemed unfreighted with emotion. Rarely, he added blasphemy when he wanted to express emphasis. He never used obscenities, scatalogical terms, or words related to body parts or functions.
No one else I knew spoke that way, and somehow I was made to understand that although such expressions were a normal part of my father’s speech, they were taboo for everyone else.
When I was in high school and college, I became aware that, although those ordinary swear words were becoming more common, there was still one shocking word to be avoided; the one referred to as “the f word.”
Unfortunately, that word has become too common, peppered through movies and books in profusion, used not only as a verb, but as a noun, adjective, adverb, gerund, participle, as well as an imperative and a form of personal address. It’s sad. It has become the single most boring word in the English language.
I wonder if other languages still have words that retain the power of a curse. Perhaps it’s because we no longer believe in curses that such words have become mere detritus clogging the flow of meaning in our speech.
Ann Dickinson Sargent 