Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1885 — Why People Swear. [ARTICLE]

Why People Swear.

Some people bave been found to say a good word for bad language; but this is out of love of paradox. They have pleaded that the custom of swearing is analogous to that of emphatic speaking, and that those who are too lazy to think of the right word to express their meaning drop out of sheer carelessness into the easy, slipshod style of using expletives. Unfortunately it is not merely the ignorant, who might by some possibility be supposed not io know the correct term to employ in order to express strong feeling, that are guilty of the improper habit. It prevails to a considerable extent in circles where refinement and education are supposed to prevail Men who have been to the university, and possibly have come out as first-class men or wranglers, have been known before now to take the short-cut road to their meaning which swearing unhappily-supplies. In such cases, perhaps, it may be urged in excuse that severe academical training or examination have so reduced their stock of brain power that the discovery of the appropriate and seemly adjective to apply in any case is as difficult for these tights of learning as for the plowboy or lhe day laborer. And there may be something in this excuse. Intellectual laziness is accountable for a good deal of the hasty judgment as well as the hasty language which is current; and in the rush and hurry of life a busy man may argue that he really has no time to be particular about his phrases. This might be accepted as a legitimate plea if it could be shown that “strong” language is at all more easy to utter than weak; such, however, is not the case, and the whole thing is a matter of habit. It begins, perhaps, with intellectual laziness, or the desire to appear on a par with the swearing world around; boys adopt a lamentable variety of expletives, very often simply out of the emulative faculty. Possibly the “swell” of their school thinks it a fine thing to call a game of cricket “infernally tedious,” whereupon his youthful imitators proceed at once to garnish their ordinary conversation with a good deal of imagery borrowed from the lower regions. The popular desire of emphasis in speech must not blind us to the fact that it is very ill-manners to swear. The habit, whatever be its origin, is a deplorable one, and can not be legitimately defended by anybody. —London TeZeflrrapA.