HOLY SHIT This page intentionally left blank HOLY SHIT A Brief History of Swearing Melissa Mohr 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Th ailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Melissa Mohr 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitt ed, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitt ed by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction rights outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form, and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mohr, Melissa. Holy shit : a brief history of swearing / Melissa Mohr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-19-974267-7 1. Swearing—History. 2. English language—Obscene words—History. 3. English language—Slang—History. 4. English language—Social aspects—History 5. English language—History. I. Title. PE3724.S85.M65 2013 417(cid:99).2—dc23 2012034513 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To John Harington and Samuel Johnson And to my husband This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments | ix Introduction | 3 1. T o Speak with Roman Plainness: Ancient Rome | 16 2. On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Th e Bible | 55 3. Swearing God to Pieces: Th e Middle Ages | 88 4. Th e Rise of Obscenity: Th e Renaissance | 129 5. Th e Age of Euphemism: Th e Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries | 173 6. “Fuck ’Em All”: Swearing in the Twentieth Century and Beyond | 227 Epilogue | 253 NOTES | 2 59 CREDITS | 305 INDEX | 307 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Katie Boyle for her tremendous enthusiasm and all her work on my behalf. I would like to thank Tim Bent for his enthusiasm too, as well as his careful editing and his thoroughly useful suggestions of ways to improve this book. It seems to me that being an agent or an editor requires a certain amount of faith—I thank them both for putt ing theirs in me. Many people read draft s of this book or answered questions I had, and I thank them: J. N. Adams, Emily Allen-Hornblower, Mar- cia Blakenham, Dorothy Bray, Chloe Breyer, George Brown, Cres- sida Cowell, Edwin Craun, Mary Custic, Ben Faccini, Emily Faccini, Andrea Heberlein, Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, Ron Hirsch, Ruth Mazo Karras, Simon Kirby, Diane Asadorian Masters, Tom Mohr, Monique Morgan, Stephen Orgel, Lawrence Poos, David Riggs, Carolyn Sale, Greg Scholl, and Linda Rabieh, who thought of the title. Finally, I would like to thank my children for gett ing their heads around the idea that Mommy was writing a book about “pott y talk,” and my husband, who cheerfully read draft aft er draft . Writing this book—which spans more than four thousand years of history, give or take, and addresses everything from the Bible to poetry to legal cases to neuroscience—I very much felt the misgiv- ings Samuel Johnson described when he set out the plan of his dic- tionary in 1747: “I cannot hope, in the warmest moments, to preserve ix