Paging Bill Safire

Matthew Yglesias and his readers probe the etymological differences, across languages, between "shit" and "fuck."

Comments

[Ron Hardin]

What's a taboo word varies across languages anyway. You need taboo words in order to be rude when necessary, so they're always invented, but what they mean is up for grabs.

They're rude by assuming a relationship with the listener that has not been earned or granted, thus offending the listener; not by what they refer to.

Incidentally, the f-word is not a verb; on this see Quang Phuc Dong ``English Sentences without Overt Grammatical Subject'' in _Studies out in Left Field: Defamatory Essays Presented to James D. McCawley on the Occasion of His 33rd or 34th Birthday_ Zwicky et al., eds.

[beavis]

Heh Heh. He said "Dong".

[butthead]

Heh Heh. He said "Quang". Heh-Heh-Heh.

[Plutarck]

That's true - actually, "fucking" is usually a verb (it almost always is when it is not an adjective), while "fuck" almost never is.

Slang is a very loose grammatical language, which actually is quite similar to languages like Chinese in many ways, mainly in how words can be used as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs while sometimes meaning something similar, and sometimes meaning something entirely different.

[time-traveler]

Must've been an important word, back in the 21st century, when humans still procreated by mixing body fluids.

[Anonymous]

Heh Heh. He said "Phuc".