ORIGINS OF "DIRTY" WORDS

The origin of our "dirty words." While the Latinate terms for sexual parts and body functions (vagina, penis, urinate, defecate, fornicate, etc.) are considered "acceptable" speech, all the Old English and Teutonic words for the same body parts and functions became taboo (cunt, prick, piss, shit, fuck, etc.) Why? The "dirty words" were originally
taboo not because they were "immoral" but because they were "low-class" - the speech of the people. The upper classes, gathered around the court where they hobnobbed with Catholic clerics, spoke Latin both as an
amusement and as a signature of their aristocratic status. The European peasants, needless to say, did not speak Latin, but their own indigenous Scandinavian, Germanic, and Old English dialects. Fuck, shit, piss, prick, and cunt underwent social taboo originally because they were socially vulgar - i.e., the common speech of the people, native European pagan speech...

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