Comparing and contrasting regular words in Old English from today’s language may not seem easy at first, but it’s a lot easier than finding profanity. We learned in class how to form words like blod and sendan. Most of Old English was written in a more professional manner. There was not much profanity. For example, our saying “to shit” could have come from scitan, but we don’t know how related they actually are. Scitan could have had a different meaning than it now does. Another curse word for us, fuck, doesn’t show up until the 15th century. They question whether it comes from the Middle English word fike, which means to fidget. Again, this is not known because for all we know the word could have been used, but not just kept track of. Profanity used to align with more religious words, but that has changed and now we have more words that don’t relate directly to a religious symbol. Modern curse words are now being used as interjections. It started with “zounds” in Shakespeare and has now led to “shit” being used the same way.
Words- 186
Post-59
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