Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

327 Pages·2013·3.16 MB·English

by  Melissa Mohr

HOLY SHIT
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HOLY SHIT
A Brief History of Swearing
Melissa Mohr

1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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Published in the United States of America by
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© 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,
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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
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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
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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
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