Swearing rooted in history

Swearing is nothing new. Medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer delighted in a stupendous collection of oaths all the better to titillate those who heard his Canterbury Tales.

And before that? Linguists speculate that swearing, and the taboos that surround it, have their roots in "word magic" in early civilisations.

People were more likely to believe in beings that had the power to punish them and would call on such beings to curse those they disliked. This became a taboo use of language and, sometimes, just saying the divine thing's name was rather naughty.

In Norse cultures, swearing - or "flyting" - was entertainment: people flaunted their creativity by inventing insults for one other before an audience.

In the fascinating Swearing: the history of foul language, oaths and profanity in English (Blackwell, 1991), Geoffrey Hughes suggests swearing is on the increase because the churches' hold on moral life is waning.

Early swear words were often blasphemy: to say "God!" in 1350 was so offensive that euphemisms such as "gog" arose. Euphemistic sex and excretion terms such as "frigging" (1785) and "shucks" (1847) came later.

Linguists find swear words worthy of study - here's a potted etymology of six from Hughes' book and the Oxford Concise Dictionary:

* Bugger derives from the French bougre, Bulgarian, meaning a heretic in the 14th century and, in a hostile extension, a sodomite in the 16th.

* Bitch has its origins in Germanic-influenced Old English, spoken up to 1150; from bicce meaning female dog.

* Bastard is probably from the Old French (up to 1400) phrase fils de bast, literally "packsaddle son", as in the son of a mule driver who uses a packsaddle for a pillow and is gone by morning.

* The S word arose from the Old English (up to 1150) scitte, meaning diarrhoea.

* The F word is possibly derived from the Old Norse verb fukja, to drive.

* The C word derives from Middle English about 1200, referring to women's genitalia; the history is uncertain but the word possibly has links to the Latin cunnus.