Profanity.

I'm just talking words here, naughty slang words.  Really, that's what profanity is, naughty words.  I can't think right now of a profanity that doesn't have a non-profane word with the same meaning that isn't offensive (unless you are extremely prudish).  This seems a bit weird, why wouldn't there be a word that just represents naughtiness?

I grew up in a household that didn't swear much and went to a school where the students didn't swear much either.  I understand now that the latter is quite unusual.  I don't think I missed out on learning any of the words (although there will always be bizarre words for very strange things that I won't know) but they just weren't used that much.  As an adult I now know that I grew up in an unusual part of England as I would suggest that England averages more, and more naughty words, per capita than the USA. 

When I came to the USA my exposure to swearing went up a lot, but my use of profanity didn't.  At the time there were still campaigns for decency and such and so profanity could still shock somewhat.  Naturally my language didn't use much profanity, and it probably helped my Englishness, an extremely useful thing at the time.  I also thought that the point of swearing is to emphasize anger, or disgust.  The shock factor of swearing would wake people up to how upset you are.  So my lack of swearing wasn't prudishness, or embarrassment, it was for utility.

Over the last twenty years what was once profanity is now commonplace.  Turn on the tv and although much of the swearing has a bleep over it, everyone knows what is being said.  In public swearing is often almost like punctuation, or a replacement for the word, "very", or a negative adjective.  There just isn't a shock factor.  As a result the essential reason for profanity, and why I didn't use it very much, has gone.  To me this is a shame, because there should be words that are infrequently used and have an emotional reaction.  The worth of profanity has gone in many places and so the language has been cheapened.  At the same time my use of profanity has dramatically increased to match that of the culture around me.  At this point it would often be a bit weird not to swear.

Has anything replaced the profanity of twenty years ago?  If I had to say that anything had I would say it is the acceptable insults from that time.  Call someone a participant in an improbable sexual event and I think it likely to have as much effect as calling someone a pathetic excuse for a human being.  The first is just swearing, the second is close enough to reality to hurt.

For those still offended by profanity don't read the bit after this.

When something goes wrong, or am I amazed by something, my favorite swearing construction is, "Christ on a fucking crutch!"  I also enjoy the old world charm of, "Bugger me backwards with a bargepole."  Neither of them make any sense.