Father Ted TV - Mark Thomas TV - William Shakespeare - Horace - George Carlin - Donnie Brasco 1997 - Bloody Mama 1970 - Nazi Oaths - Game of Thrones TV - William Hazlitt - George Washington - The Young Ones TV - Penn & Teller TV - George Orwell - Laurence Sterne - Independent online - Watergate 1994 TV - Spitting Image TV - Agatha Christie - Genesis 22:16 - Genesis 24:2&3 - Genesis 31:53 - Leviticus 5:1 - Leviticus 5:4 - Leviticus 19:12 - Leviticus 24:14 - I Kings 2:23-25 - I Kings 2:42-46 - Isaiah 45:23 - Isaiah 48:1 - Matthew 5:33-37 - James 5:12 - Koran 5:89 –
I didn’t think you’d like that sort of thing. I read a bit of one of them once. God, I couldn’t finish it – the language! Unbelievable. It’s a bit much for me, Father – feck this and feck that. Ya big bastard. Oh dreadful language. Ya big hairy arse, you big fecker. Fierce stuff. And of course the F word, Father … Bastard this and bastard that. You can’t move for the bastards in her novels. It’s wall to wall bastards. Father Ted: And God Created Woman s1e5, Mrs Doyle to Ted, Channel 4 1995
I love swearing. I think it’s imaginative, I think it’s creative, and I think it’s clever. Hah-hah-hah. I adore swearing. Mark Thomas, Sex, Filth & Religion, Channel 4 1995
Do not swear at all. William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet 1996 starring Leonardo DiCaprio & Brian Dennehy & Christina Pickles & Dash Mihok & Jesse Bradford & Zak Orth & Claire Danes & Paul Sorvino & Diane Venora & John Leguizamo & Harold Perrineau & Pete Postlethwaite & Paul Rudd & Vondie Curtis-Hall et al, director Baz Luhrmann
You swear like a comfit-maker’s wife. William Shakespeare, I Henry IV III i 252
Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,
A good mouth-filling oath. ibid. III i 257
... drinking, fencing, swearing
Quarrelling, drabbing – you may go so far. William Shakespeare, Hamlet II i 25-26, Polonius to Reynaldo, re spying on son Laertes
Ah, simple men, you know not what you swear. William Shakespeare, Richard Duke of York III i 82, King Henry to gamekeepers
Riotous madness,
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows
Which break themselves in swearing. William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra I iii 29-31, Cleopatra
You taught me language, and my profit on’t
Is I know how to curse. William Shakespeare, The Tempest I ii 365-366, Caliban
Not bound to swear allegiance to any master,
Wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor. Horace, Epistles
Swearing on the Bible. You understand that shit? They tell you to raise you right hand, place your left hand on the bible. Does this stuff really matter which hand? Does God really give a fuck about details like this? ... If they said to me, Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, I’d say, Yeah! I’ll tell you as much truth as the people that wrote that fucking Bible. How do like that, huh? … It’s kid’s stuff. George Carlin
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war. George Carlin
I’m a Mormon, minister; now clean it up. Donnie Brasco 1997 starring Al Pacino & Johnny Depp & Michael Madsen & Bruno Kirby & Anne Heche & James Russo & Zeliko Ivanek & Gerry Becker & Andrew Parks & Robert Miano et al, director Mike Newell, FBI boss
I’ve told you and I told you and I told you not to curse in my house. Bloody Mama 1970 starring Shelley Winters & Lisa Jill & Robert Walden & Alex Nicol & Robert De Niro & Pat Hingle & Don Stroud & Diane Varsi & Bruce Dern & Clint Kimbrough et al, director Roger Corman, Ma Barker
I swear by God this holy oath to the Fuhrer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler. Nazi soldiers’ oath
I swear to Adolf Hitler steadfast loyalty to him and to him absolute obedience. 1934 mass oath led by Speer
I swear by the old gods. And the new. Game of Thrones s5e2: The House of Black and White, Brienne, HBO 2015
The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation. William Hazlitt, Table Talk II
The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it. George Washington
Mike: Vyvyan, you ever heard of cloning?
Vyvyan: No.
Mike: Oh that’s good. Would you swear to that?
Vyvyan: Certainly, if that’s what you want. Big jobs! The Young Ones s1e3: Boring, BBC 1982
Stifling free speech, no matter what you call it, is humbug. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s2e6: Profanity, Showtime 2004
The whole business of swearing, essentially England swearing, is mysterious. Of its very nature swearing is as irrational as magic – indeed, it is a species of magic. But there is also a paradox about it, namely this: Our intention in swearing is to shock and wound … When a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its meaning. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Now don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them, — imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
1) Ninnyhammer: blockhead, fool or braggard
2) Tarse: male genitalia
3) Ninnycock: male genitalia
4) Crow porridge: Vomit (often used in conjunction with another descriptor to insult
5) Bald-arse: bare buttocks, also ‘balled arse’, sometimes used in conjunction with an accusation of prostitution
6) Polecat: lewd woman
7) Copper-nosed: derives from the practice of treating syphilis with copper, as well as the use of artificial noses to correct nose disfigurement and loss (a casualty of syphilis)
8) Cucumber: cuckold – the husband of an adulteress – which probably was an association between the physical shape of a cucumber and that of a redundant male member
9) Wittol: husband complicit in his wife’s adultery
10) Nippy: male genitalia
11) Gouty-legged: to be encumbered with gout, a disease which causes arthritis in the joints, especially the feet
12) Beetle-browed: particularly bushy or overhanging eyebrows
13) Hollow-mouthed: lack of teeth
14) Long-nosed: harsh descriptor for someone’s nose. Independent online article Louis Dore 5th October 2016, ‘14 Long Lost English Swear-Words’
The public were appalled by the language and fascinated by the number of expletives deleted. Watergate, BBC & Discovery 1994
Gordon Bennett, Strike a light, well we really are in the Heseltine. Spitting Image s3e5, Mrs Thatcher to George Cole, ITV 1986
Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a Billingsgate fishwoman blush! Agatha Christie, Murder on the Links
And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son. Genesis 22:16, God to Abraham