What Makes a Cuss Word a Cuss Word ?

Deep Thoughts

Feb 13, 2023

Please excuse my sense of humor. But, also, please recognize, there is a genuine curiosity about this question: Why certain sounds are cuss words, and others aren’t. Think of it as an intellectual inquiry worth pursuing maybe not all the time, but at least some time in your life.

Here’s my report from 2018:

Once we were discussing what it is that makes a word offensive.

We did a thought experiment where we kept everything else the same, but switched the meanings of "duck" and the f-word that rhymes with it.

So, keep everything else the same. Imagine those two words switched meanings, such that f--k was the water fowl that quacks and is hunted and waddles and so on. Peiking f--k is a delicious dish in China. F--klings follow their mom around the pond. But in this thought experiment, "duck" is a cuss word that people are offended by, makes movies rated "R", is said profusely as a gerund in Marine Corps boot camp, and so on.

In this thought experiment, Christians definitely never say "duck." But, in Arkansas, they take their shotguns and go f--k hunting dressed head to toe in Bass Pro shop f--k hunting gear.

It's clearly not the phonetic that's offensive -- "duck" has essentially the same sound. It's not the syntax that is offensive. It's not even the semantics that's offensive. Other words that mean the same thing aren't cuss words.

So, I posed the question: what the hell is it about the word that is offensive??

We couldn't ducking figure it out. Not for the ducking life of us. So we told the question to duck off.

True story.

There is more to the story I'll tell later.

The Republican Professor

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