A minced oath, also known as a pseudo-profanity, is an expression based on a profanity which has been altered to reduce or remove the disagreeable or objectionable characteristics of the original expression; for example, "gosh" used instead of "God," "darn" instead of "damn","heck" instead of "hell" and "freaking" instead of "fucking". Nearly all profanities have minced variants; the words that are most taboo give rise to the most.^[1] Look up Profanity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Formation

The most common methods of forming a minced oath are rhyme and alliteration. Thus the word bloody can become blooming, bleeding, or ruddy.^[1] In Cockney rhyming slang, rhyming euphemisms are sometimes truncated so that the rhyme is eliminated: prick became Hampton wick and then simply Hampton. (The phrase flashing his Hampton, in turn, led to the use of the word flasher for an exhibitionist.)^[2] A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar terminal sounds in two or more different words (i. ... Alliteration is a literary device in which the same sound appears at the beginning of two or more consecutive words. ... The term bloom can refer to the following things: Bloom (novel) is a science fiction novel by Wil McCarthy. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Ruddy is a reddish or rosy colour, usually considered a dirty, dusty or dark-coloured reddish orange. ... Cockney rhyming slang is a form of English slang which originated in the East End of London. ... Hampton can mean: // Place names United States of America Hampton, Connecticut Hampton, Georgia Hampton, Iowa Hampton, Minnesota Hampton, Nebraska Hampton, New Hampshire Hampton, New Jersey Hampton, New York Hampton, South Carolina Hampton, Tennessee Hampton, Virginia Hampton Cove, Alabama Hampton Falls, New Hampshire New Hampton, New Hampshire Canada Hampton, New Brunswick... Flasher has multiple meanings: A person who displays their body in a form of indecent exposure Another name for a vehicles turn signal A species of fish in the Lobotidae family Multiple ships have been named after the fish, see USS Flasher A person who creates computer animations using... An exhibitionist is a person who practises exhibitionism as a psychological alteration of the human behaviour that neither implies the need to exhibit the genitalia or buttocks nor alterations of the psychiatric condition of the individual (although sometimes this occurs, see below). ...

Minced oaths can also be formed by shortening: b for bloody, eff for fuck.^[1] Sometimes words borrowed from other languages become minced oaths; for example, poppycock comes from the Low Dutch pappe kak, meaning "soft dung".^[2] The use of French foutre for fuck dates to 1592; later forms include foot (1600s) and footer (1753).^[3] This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Bloody is the adjectival form of blood but may also be used as a swear word or expletive attributive (intensifier) in Britain, Ireland, Canada, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka. ... The term EFF may refer to: The Election Fighting Fund, a fund which the NUWSS set up to raise money for the early Labour Party during the early 1910s. ... Nonsense is an utterance or written text in what appears to be a human language or other symbolic system, that does not in fact carry any identifiable meaning. ... Year 1592 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ...

The minced oath blank is an ironic reference to the dashes that were sometimes used to replace profanities in print.^[4] It goes back at least to 1854, when Cuthbert Bede wrote "I wouldn't give a blank for such a blank blank. I'm blank, if he doesn't look as if he'd swallowed a blank codfish." By the 1880s, it had given rise to the derived forms blanked and blankety.^[5] In the same way, bleep arose from the use of a tone to mask profanities on radio.^[4] 1854 (MDCCCLIV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Edward Bradley (1827 - 1889) was a novelist and clergyman. ... // Development and commercial production of electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. ...

Adjectival probably first became current around 1910, though in 1851 Charles Dickens wrote: Year 1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1851 (MDCCCLI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... “Dickens” redirects here. ...

Bark's parts of speech are of an awful sort -- principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark, have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective premises! I won't, by adjective and substantive!... Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers!^[6]

History

The Cretan king Rhadamanthus is said to have forbidden his subjects to swear by the gods, suggesting that they swear instead by the ram, the goose, or the plane tree. Socrates favored the "Rhadamanthine" oath "by the dog". Aristophanes mentions that people used to swear by the birds instead of by the gods, adding that the soothsayer Lampon still swears by the goose "whenever he's going to cheat you".^[7] Since no real god was called upon, Lampon may have considered this oath safe to break.^[8] In Greek myths, Rhadamanthus (Ῥαδαμάνθυς; also transliterated as Rhadamanthys or Rhadamanthos) was a wise king, the son of Zeus and Europa. ... Species See text. ... This page is about the ancient Greek philosopher. ... Sketch of Aristophanes Aristophanes (Greek: , ca. ...

The use of minced oaths in English dates back at least to the 14th century, when "gog" and "kokk", both euphemisms for God, were in use. Other early minced oaths include "Gis" or "Jis" for Jesus (1528) and "by Jove" for "by God" (1570).^[3] This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ...

Late Elizabethan drama contains a profusion of minced oaths, probably due to Puritan opposition to swearing. Seven new minced oaths are first recorded between 1598 and 1602, including 'sblood for God's blood from Shakespeare, 'slight for God's light from Ben Jonson, and 'snails for God's nails from the historian John Hayward. Swearing on stage was officially banned by the Act to Restraine Abuses of Players in 1606, and a general ban on swearing followed in 1623. In some cases the original meanings of these minced oaths were forgotten; 'struth (God's truth) came to be spelled 'strewth and zounds changed pronunciation so that it no longer sounded like God's wounds.^[9] Other examples from this period include 'slid for "God's eyelid" (1598) and sfoot for "God's foot" (1602). Gadzooks, for "God's hooks" (the nails on Christ's cross), followed in the 1650s, and odsbodikins, for "God's little body", in 1709.^[10] The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. ... For the record label, see Puritan Records. ... Shakespeare redirects here. ... For other persons of the same name, see Ben Johnson (disambiguation). ... Relics that are claimed to be the Holy Nails with which Christ was crucified are objects of veneration among some Christians. ... The traditional form of the Western Christian cross, known as the Latin cross. ...

Acceptability

Although minced oaths are not as strong as the expressions from which they derive, some still find them offensive. One writer in 1550 considered "idle oaths" like "by cocke" (by God), "by the cross of the mouse foot", and "by Saint Chicken" to be "most abominable blasphemy".^[11] The minced oaths "'sblood" and "zounds" were omitted from the Folio edition of Shakespeare's play Othello, probably due to Puritan-influenced censorship.^[12] In 1941 a U.S. federal judge threatened a lawyer with contempt of court for using the word "darn".^[13] Zounds may sound amusing and archaic to the modern ear,^[14] yet as late as 1984 a writer recalled that "some years ago", after using it in print, he had received complaints that it was blasphemous because of its origin as "God's wounds".^[15] Shakespeare redirects here. ... Othello and Desdemona by Alexandre-Marie Colin. ... For the record label, see Puritan Records. ... Contempt of court is a court ruling which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, deems an individual as holding contempt for the court, its process, and its invested powers. ...

Minced oaths in fiction

Writers of fiction sometimes face the problem of portraying characters who swear without offending audiences or incurring censorship. Somerset Maugham directly referred to this problem in his 1919 novel The Moon and Sixpence, where he admitted: Censorship is defined as the removal and/or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body. ... W. Somerset Maugham as photographed in 1934 by Carl Van Vechten. ... The Moon and Sixpence (1919) is a book by William Somerset Maugham based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin. ...

Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, did not use exactly the words I have given, but since this book is meant for family reading, I thought it better -- at the expense of truth -- to put into his mouth language familiar to the domestic circle.^[16]

In The Naked and the Dead (1948), Norman Mailer wanted to accurately represent the speech of soldiers, but had to substitute "fug" for fuck for publication.^[17] In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway used words like "unprintable" and "unspeakable" in place of obscenities,^[18] while Gore Vidal, in the first edition of Myron, pointedly used the names of the Supreme Court Justices who had defined obscenity in Miller v. California.^[19] Comic strip writers in the 1930s, unable to print profanity in newspapers, used existing substitutes or made up their own; some of the expletives they invented later came into general use as minced oaths.^[20] The Naked and the Dead is a 1948 novel, the first written by Norman Mailer. ... Norman Mailer, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948 Norman Kingsley Mailer (born January 31, 1923) is an American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. ... For Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway. ... Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. ... Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (born October 3, 1925) (pronounced , occasionally , , etc) is an American author of novels, stage plays, screenplays, and essays. ... Myron is the name of a 1974 novel by Gore Vidal. ... In order to become a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, an individual must be nominated by the President of the United States and approved by the U.S. Senate, with at least half of that body approving in the affirmative. ... Holding Obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and that, taken as a whole, lack serious... This article is about the comic strip, the sequential art form as published in newspapers and on the Internet. ...

Popular culture

A few other invented profanities have been used outside the context of the original fiction. "Frell", one of several invented oaths from the science-fiction TV program Farscape, was sometimes used in conversation by the show's fans,^[21] and "frak", a substitute for fuck used on the television series Battlestar Galactica, has entered wider usage.^[22] In 2006 it was used by characters on two other TV series, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars,^[23] as well as in a Dilbert comic strip.^[24] On the Language Log weblog, linguist Arnold Zwicky suggested that frak is particularly successful because it phonologically resembles both fuck and frig.^[25] Farscape (1999–2003) is a science fiction television series, featuring a present-day astronaut who accidentally travels through a wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy. ... Battlestar Galactica is a science fiction miniseries which was first broadcast on the Sci Fi Channel on December 8, 2003. ... Battlestar Galactica. ... Gilmore Girls was an American television drama/comedy that began on October 5, 2000 and aired its final episode on May 15, 2007. ... This article is about the Veronica Mars television series. ... Dilbert (first published April 16, 1989) is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. ... A weblog (now more commonly known as a blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order). ... Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ...

In the TV series Firefly and its spinoff, Serenity, another form of minced oath is used, in this case comprised of a legitimate spoken language, rather than invented words: Mandarin Chinese. In the DVD commentary for the original pilot episode "Serenity," series creator Joss Whedon states that Mandarin is used in place of standard swear words "to avoid having to censor it," and that Chinese was chosen over other languages because, within the Firefly universe, China and the United States were the only two superpower countries capable of the interstellar travel depicted. There are also a number of occasions where Mal and other characters use the minced curse "gorram", a corrupted version of "goddamn". Characters also utter the word "rutting", replacing the word "fuck" entirely while still referring (albeit indirectly) to the act itself. Firefly is an American science fiction television series created by writer/director Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, under his Mutant Enemy Productions. ... Serenity is a 2005 science fiction space western/epic film written and directed by Joss Whedon. ... This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. ... A television pilot is the first episode of an intended television series. ... Joss Hill Whedon (born Joseph Hill Whedon[3] on June 23, 1964 in New York) is an American writer, director, executive producer, and creator of the well-known television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. ... For other uses, see Superpower (disambiguation). ... Malcolm Mal Reynolds is a fictional character leading the ensemble in the science fiction television series Firefly, played by actor Nathan Fillion. ...

The TV comedy Father Ted inadvertently helped to export and popularise the Hiberno-English word feck through its characters' liberal use of it. In an interview, Dermot Morgan explained that, in Ireland, feck is far less offensive than fuck. Father Ted was a popular 1990s television situation comedy set around the lives of three priests on the extremely remote (and completely fictional) Craggy Island off the west coast of Ireland. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Feck (or, in some senses, fek) is a monosyllable with several vernacular meanings and variations in Irish English, Scots, Middle English, and Esperanto: // Slang expletive employed as an attenuated alternative (minced oath) to fuck Verb meaning to steal (e. ... Dermot Morgan (3 March 1952 - 28 February 1998), an Irish school-teacher turned comedian and actor, achieved international renown as Father Ted Crilly in the Channel 4 television sitcom Father Ted. ...

In the TV series Scrubs, Dr. Elliot Reid often says "frick" in place of the more vulgar alternative.

Other instances

• "fsck" is commonly used in technology-related communications. "fsck" is also the name of a Unix program which analyzes and fixes potential filesystem problems after an improper shutdown of the operating system, standing for "filesystem check".

• Online, alternative typographical glyphs are sometimes used to evade the profanity filters (such as $hit [also $#!+] instead of shit, @ss or @rse instead of ass or arse, or a$$h013 rather than "asshole"). Although, when profanity is detected, it is usually replaced by random glyphs or simply an asterisk per each character, such as c*** instead of cunt, though in many chatrooms, the offending typist is isolated from the room in some manner, such as a brief period of 'silence', where they're simply not allowed to type anything at all.

The system utility fsck (for file system check or file system consistency check) is a tool for checking the consistency of a file system in the Unix system and clones thereof. ... The system utility fsck (for file system check or file system consistency check) is a tool for checking the consistency of a file system in the Unix system and clones thereof. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... See Filing system for this term as it is used in libraries and offices In computing, a file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Ass may refer to: Look up ass in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Arse is an English term referring to the buttocks, first recorded circa 1400 (in arce-hoole) and is commonly used in English speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and former parts of the British Empire. ... An asterisk (*), is a typographical symbol or glyph. ... Cunt is an English language vulgarism most commonly used in reference to the human vulva or vagina and, more generally, the pubis, from the mons veneris to the perineum. ...

Notes

Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 36th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 330th day of the year (331st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the 1974 Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 288th day of the year (289th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several business commentaries, social satires, and experimental philosophy books. ... is the 342nd day of the year (343rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 42nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... June 7 is the 158th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (159th in leap years), with 207 days remaining. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 70th day of the year (71st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

• Dickens, Charles (1999). Reprinted Pieces by Charles Dickens. Hazelton, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 150. 

• Hughes, Geoffrey (1991). Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-16593-2. 

• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (CD-ROM) (1994).

See also

• Blasphemy
• Bowdlerization
• Euphemism
• Expletive deleted
• Profanity