The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #96490   Message #1887789
Posted By: BuckMulligan
18-Nov-06 - 02:25 PM
Thread Name: BS: Where have all the swear-words gone?
Subject: RE: BS: Where have all the swear-words gone?
Mooh - that construction actually has a name, "tmesis" and isn't limited to "fucking" nor to English. And it's great fun to make up new ones. It's a very common phenomenon in all languages for words and phrases to lose potency; "naughty" and "mischief" which in our day carry connotations of childhood innocence, were once very strong terms of evil. For Nigel and the other "wordless" ones, I suggest lurking around some 10 year olds (unobserved of course, how else does one lurk?). I'm sure the vocabulary is there - remember, we didn't think our parents knew Carlin's "seven dirty words" either (to this day I'm more than half convinced that both of mine went to their graves innocent of at least
"motherfucker")