1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,920 Speaker 1: Hell, Well, that got your attention right? How and why 2 00:00:04,960 --> 00:00:08,840 Speaker 1: did we start cursing, swearing, even gesturing when we got 3 00:00:08,880 --> 00:00:12,160 Speaker 1: angry or were simply shocked or amused by something we saw, 4 00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:15,920 Speaker 1: or because of something somebody did to us. I'm Patty Steele. 5 00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:21,560 Speaker 1: What the started the cursing trend? That's next on the backstory? 6 00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:29,000 Speaker 1: The backstory is back. Sometimes don't you just want to 7 00:00:29,160 --> 00:00:32,919 Speaker 1: grit your teeth and spew out some vile language. I 8 00:00:32,960 --> 00:00:35,280 Speaker 1: know it's not very classy, but at the end of 9 00:00:35,320 --> 00:00:38,920 Speaker 1: the day, it's a release of sorts. In fact, Mark 10 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:43,760 Speaker 1: Twain said that under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief 11 00:00:43,840 --> 00:00:47,720 Speaker 1: denied even to prayer. I guess what people have been 12 00:00:47,760 --> 00:00:50,120 Speaker 1: swearing for at least as long as they've been praying. 13 00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:53,159 Speaker 1: He also said there ought to be a room in 14 00:00:53,280 --> 00:00:56,760 Speaker 1: every house to swear in. It's dangerous to repress an 15 00:00:56,760 --> 00:01:00,560 Speaker 1: emotion like that. But how did it start and how 16 00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:04,440 Speaker 1: his cursing evolved? Well, actually, did you know that all 17 00:01:04,480 --> 00:01:11,600 Speaker 1: mammals have an impulse to vocalize when feeling strong emotions pain, fear, joy, 18 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:16,240 Speaker 1: even sexual excitement. A good scream gives us a sense 19 00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:20,680 Speaker 1: of release from all those feelings. Cursing increases our heart rate, 20 00:01:21,160 --> 00:01:24,080 Speaker 1: even makes us sweat, but it helps us deal with 21 00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:28,320 Speaker 1: emotional upset, and studies show a good swear word can 22 00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:32,040 Speaker 1: even relieve physical pain. Of course, how we curse today 23 00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:35,720 Speaker 1: is really pretty different from how people cursed centuries ago. 24 00:01:36,200 --> 00:01:39,520 Speaker 1: What people consider to be cursing has always depended on 25 00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:41,880 Speaker 1: what was I don't know, sort of taboo at that 26 00:01:41,920 --> 00:01:44,920 Speaker 1: given point in time. It might be considered crude, or 27 00:01:44,959 --> 00:01:49,440 Speaker 1: it might be blasphemous. The earliest expletives were phrases that 28 00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:52,200 Speaker 1: had to do with religion. For instance, some of the 29 00:01:52,240 --> 00:01:57,720 Speaker 1: worst curses in medieval days included God's bones, God's nails, 30 00:01:57,840 --> 00:01:59,920 Speaker 1: or really anything to do with God that was a 31 00:02:00,080 --> 00:02:04,840 Speaker 1: religious In the fourteen and fifteen hundreds, cursing was actually 32 00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:08,200 Speaker 1: pretty much accepted as a perfectly normal way to add 33 00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:12,119 Speaker 1: emphasis to what you were saying. Some popular curses included 34 00:02:12,240 --> 00:02:17,760 Speaker 1: calling someone a licorice, glutton, freckled, bitter jobber, noel goose cap, 35 00:02:18,080 --> 00:02:21,480 Speaker 1: or a niny lobcock. All name calling in those days, 36 00:02:22,040 --> 00:02:25,880 Speaker 1: but amazingly one of the worst curses you can utter today. 37 00:02:26,160 --> 00:02:30,160 Speaker 1: The sea word was perfectly acceptable in those times. It 38 00:02:30,200 --> 00:02:34,119 Speaker 1: was found in medical text books in literature, even weirdly 39 00:02:34,240 --> 00:02:36,679 Speaker 1: as part of street names in areas that were known 40 00:02:36,720 --> 00:02:41,120 Speaker 1: for prostitution. For instance, one town in Glastonbury, England, was 41 00:02:41,160 --> 00:02:45,600 Speaker 1: called grope, seaword lane Wow. A couple of words were 42 00:02:45,639 --> 00:02:49,040 Speaker 1: the equivalent of the F word, including sard and swive, 43 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:53,800 Speaker 1: just basic words for copulation. One book included the edict 44 00:02:54,080 --> 00:02:57,680 Speaker 1: don't sart another man's wife. By the late fifteen and 45 00:02:57,760 --> 00:03:01,480 Speaker 1: early sixteen hundreds, there was a movement of sorts that 46 00:03:01,560 --> 00:03:04,600 Speaker 1: decided swearing was a no no, and as they got 47 00:03:04,720 --> 00:03:08,400 Speaker 1: nicer language wise, they began to combine two or more 48 00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:14,120 Speaker 1: naughty words, creating new slang, but with nicer terms like gadzooks, 49 00:03:14,160 --> 00:03:17,080 Speaker 1: a curse used in place of God's hooks. In the 50 00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:21,680 Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, the word zounds, a shortened version of God's wounds, 51 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:25,600 Speaker 1: showed up in Shakespeare's plays, and in the eighteen hundreds 52 00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:29,320 Speaker 1: people in Ireland used the word bijabbers as a nicer 53 00:03:29,360 --> 00:03:33,000 Speaker 1: way of saying by Jesus. Even today in England they 54 00:03:33,080 --> 00:03:37,040 Speaker 1: used the term bloody, which originally was God's blood. Now 55 00:03:37,080 --> 00:03:40,040 Speaker 1: the phrase four letter words was first used to describe 56 00:03:40,040 --> 00:03:42,320 Speaker 1: swear words all the way up in the nineteen twenties, 57 00:03:42,600 --> 00:03:46,200 Speaker 1: and there was a good reason. Of the approximately eighty 58 00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:50,080 Speaker 1: four commonly used American English swear words, twenty nine of 59 00:03:50,120 --> 00:03:53,840 Speaker 1: them have four letters, including the F word, the S word, 60 00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:56,200 Speaker 1: the C word, the H word, and the D word. 61 00:03:56,880 --> 00:04:00,840 Speaker 1: And what about naughty gestures? The most popular these days 62 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:04,880 Speaker 1: is the middle finger aka the bird, but that gesture 63 00:04:04,920 --> 00:04:07,880 Speaker 1: has been around for thousands of years. It was used 64 00:04:07,920 --> 00:04:11,240 Speaker 1: as a sexual thread of sorts in ancient Greece and Rome, 65 00:04:11,640 --> 00:04:14,560 Speaker 1: and was basically seen as a phallic symbol. By the 66 00:04:14,640 --> 00:04:18,440 Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds, it became a common sign of disrespect, 67 00:04:18,839 --> 00:04:23,920 Speaker 1: most common among actors, celebrities, athletes, and politicians. The first 68 00:04:23,960 --> 00:04:27,320 Speaker 1: documented case of somebody flipping the bird in the United 69 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:31,160 Speaker 1: States was in eighteen eighty six. It happened when Old 70 00:04:31,240 --> 00:04:35,159 Speaker 1: Haas Radbourne, a baseball pitcher for the Boston bean Eaters, 71 00:04:35,560 --> 00:04:38,400 Speaker 1: got his picture taken flipping off a member of the 72 00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:43,240 Speaker 1: rival New York Giants. By the twentieth century, mass media 73 00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:47,039 Speaker 1: began to make cursing more mainstream. In fact, Gone with 74 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:50,400 Speaker 1: the Wind, producer David O'selznik had to fight to get 75 00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:53,440 Speaker 1: the now classic line, Frankly, my dear, I don't give 76 00:04:53,440 --> 00:04:57,520 Speaker 1: a damn into the flick, telling regulators, this word as 77 00:04:57,640 --> 00:04:59,839 Speaker 1: used in the picture is not an oath or a 78 00:05:00,800 --> 00:05:02,640 Speaker 1: The worst that could be said of it is that 79 00:05:02,680 --> 00:05:06,679 Speaker 1: it's a vulgarism. And in the nineteen sixties, comedian Lenny 80 00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:10,360 Speaker 1: Bruce was arrested a bunch of times on obscenity charges 81 00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:14,920 Speaker 1: for using explicit language in his act. In nineteen seventy two, 82 00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:19,080 Speaker 1: George Carlin was arrested for performing his seven Dirty Words 83 00:05:19,080 --> 00:05:22,000 Speaker 1: You Can't Say on Television act while performing at an 84 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:25,560 Speaker 1: outdoor festival in Wisconsin, not on TV, but in public. 85 00:05:26,120 --> 00:05:28,719 Speaker 1: A year later, his routine was played on the radio, 86 00:05:29,160 --> 00:05:31,840 Speaker 1: which led to a number of court cases about what 87 00:05:31,960 --> 00:05:35,880 Speaker 1: words should be banned from broadcast, radio, and television. All 88 00:05:35,920 --> 00:05:39,080 Speaker 1: of that was just fifty years ago, but that common 89 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:44,280 Speaker 1: usage has really exploded. The entertainment industry has done the 90 00:05:44,320 --> 00:05:48,120 Speaker 1: most to normalized cussing. But these days, the film industry's 91 00:05:48,200 --> 00:05:52,719 Speaker 1: classification and rating administration goes through every line of every 92 00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:56,160 Speaker 1: flick and they decide exactly how many naughty words it 93 00:05:56,200 --> 00:06:00,000 Speaker 1: takes to get your movie and r rating. Mel Brooks said, 94 00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:05,200 Speaker 1: I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's BS and 95 00:06:05,279 --> 00:06:08,360 Speaker 1: trust me he didn't just use the initials. I bet 96 00:06:08,440 --> 00:06:11,599 Speaker 1: that felt really good. Hope you liked the Backstory with 97 00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:14,400 Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I would love it 98 00:06:14,440 --> 00:06:17,400 Speaker 1: if you'd subscribe or follow for free to get new 99 00:06:17,400 --> 00:06:21,040 Speaker 1: episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm me if 100 00:06:21,080 --> 00:06:23,560 Speaker 1: you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, 101 00:06:23,600 --> 00:06:33,520 Speaker 1: It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm 102 00:06:33,520 --> 00:06:38,120 Speaker 1: Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, 103 00:06:38,279 --> 00:06:42,160 Speaker 1: the Elvis Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer 104 00:06:42,200 --> 00:06:45,520 Speaker 1: is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new 105 00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:49,080 Speaker 1: episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out 106 00:06:49,080 --> 00:06:52,560 Speaker 1: to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram 107 00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:55,760 Speaker 1: at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. 108 00:06:56,160 --> 00:06:59,120 Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the 109 00:06:59,200 --> 00:07:02,159 Speaker 1: pieces of his history you didn't know you needed to know.