Narrator: An elderly woman, her mind and memory ravaged by Alzheimer's, sits silently in her wheelchair. She doesn't speak during meals or when shown photos of her own family. Her granddaughter, visiting her at the nursing home, isn't even sure if she's recognized. During a walk outside, the wheelchair bumps over a crack in the sidewalk. Suddenly, the woman speaks her first and only word of the visit: "Shit!" before lapsing back into silence. This startling moment reveals a profound truth about the human brain: swearwords are not like other words. They are stored in a different, more primal part of our minds, capable of surviving even when the rest of our language has faded away. This deep, neurological, and cultural power of profanity is the central subject of Melissa Mohr's fascinating book, Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, which traces the evolution of offensive language from the sacred oaths of the ancient world to the f-bombs of today.

Narrator: Swearwords are fundamentally different from ordinary language, operating from a more ancient and emotional part of the brain. Mohr illustrates this by pointing to cases where language is severely impaired, yet the ability to swear remains intact. Beyond the story of her own grandmother, she presents the case of the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire. After a severe stroke in 1866, Baudelaire lost almost all of his speech, except for a single, endlessly repeated phrase: "Cré nom!" This was short for "sacré nom de Dieu" (holy name of God), a powerful oath that was deeply offensive to the nuns caring for him. They were so scandalized they believed he was possessed by a demon and expelled him from their hospital.

Modern science confirms what these stories suggest. Swearing is largely controlled by the limbic system, the part of the brain that governs emotion, rather than the cortex, which handles higher-order functions like grammar and syntax. This is why swearing feels so cathartic. Research shows that uttering a swearword can increase a person's heart rate and even their tolerance for pain. In one study, subjects could keep their hands submerged in ice-cold water for significantly longer when repeating the word "shit" compared to a neutral word like "shoot." This physiological response demonstrates that swearwords are not just empty signifiers; they are powerful tools that have a direct, measurable effect on our bodies, hardwired into our most basic emotional circuits.

Narrator: Much of what modern English speakers consider obscene—words related to sex and excretion—has its roots in the world of ancient Rome. However, the Roman concept of obscenity was built on a different set of cultural values. While they had words equivalent to "fuck" (futuo) and "cunt" (cunnus), their taboos were not organized around a heterosexual/homosexual binary. Instead, the most critical distinction was between being the active, penetrating partner and the passive, penetrated one. A true Roman man, a vir, was expected to be dominant. To be penetrated, whether by a man or a woman, was the ultimate source of shame.

This cultural framework gave rise to a uniquely Roman form of insult. The poet Catullus, when faced with critics who questioned his masculinity, famously threatened them by writing, "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo," which translates to "I will sodomize you and I will force you to perform fellatio." The threat wasn't about a sexual act but about violent humiliation and the assertion of dominance. The word irrumo (to force oral sex) was one of the most potent insults in the Roman arsenal, a verbal weapon used to put an inferior in their place. This focus on active versus passive roles, and the use of sexual language as a tool for social domination, created the foundation for the "Shit" category of swearing that would gain prominence thousands of years later.

Narrator: Before sexual terms became the most offensive words, the ultimate taboos were religious. In the ancient and medieval worlds, the most powerful form of swearing was the oath—calling upon God to witness a promise. This "Holy" category of swearing is foundational to the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the Book of Genesis, God himself swears an oath to Abraham, promising him land and countless descendants. To formalize this covenant, God has Abraham slice several animals in half and then, as a smoking firepot and flaming torch, God's presence passes between the carcasses. This was a form of self-curse, implying that God should be torn apart like the animals if he were to break his promise.

This act established the oath as a sacred pillar of society. The Third Commandment, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," was not a prohibition against casual cursing but against false swearing in a court of law or breaking a solemn vow. For centuries, the most shocking words one could utter were not about sex, but about God. In the Middle Ages, people believed that swearing by "God's bones" or "God's wounds" literally dismembered the body of Christ, a sin considered even worse than the Crucifixion itself. This deep-seated belief in the magical power of God's name, and the terrible consequences of misusing it, made religious oaths the most potent and dangerous form of language.

Narrator: The transition from a world where "God's wounds" was the ultimate profanity to one where "fuck" holds that title was a slow but monumental shift that began in the Renaissance. Three major forces drove this change: Protestantism, the rise of capitalism, and a new concept of "civility." The Protestant Reformation changed the relationship between people and the divine. For Protestants, the Eucharist was a spiritual, not physical, representation of Christ's body, making the idea of physically tearing him apart through oaths less potent. Simultaneously, the sheer number of contradictory loyalty oaths people were forced to take during the religious wars devalued the power of swearing.

At the same time, a new sense of privacy and shame was emerging. As architecture evolved to include private bedrooms and parlors, bodily functions that were once public became hidden. This "advance in the frontiers of shame" created a new set of taboos around the body, sex, and excretion. Words that referred to these now-private acts gained a new, shocking power. The first known use of "fuck" as an expletive appears in 1528, scribbled in the margins of a manuscript by an angry monk complaining about his abbot. This marks the beginning of the "Shit" category of swearing eclipsing the "Holy." Oaths lost their divine power, while words for sex and the body inherited their ability to shock and offend.

Narrator: In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the battle over swearing moved from the church to the courtroom and the airwaves. The landmark obscenity trials for James Joyce's Ulysses in the 1930s and D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 dismantled old censorship laws. Courts ruled that works had to be judged in their entirety and that literary merit was a valid defense, paving the way for explicit language to enter mainstream literature. However, as one door opened, another was challenged. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case involving comedian George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" monologue. The court affirmed the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) power to regulate "indecent" language on public broadcast radio and television, especially to protect children.

Despite the FCC's regulations, swearing has become more prevalent than ever, particularly with the rise of cable television and the internet. Pop songs with explicit titles hit the top of the charts, and websites like Urban Dictionary are filled with creative definitions for every swearword imaginable. Mohr argues that this doesn't signal a moral decline but rather a continuation of the historical cycle. As old taboos lose their power, new ones emerge. Today, many consider racial slurs to be the most offensive words in the English language, demonstrating that the power of swearing is constantly shifting to reflect society's deepest anxieties—be they about God, sex, or social justice.

Narrator: Melissa Mohr's Holy Shit reveals that the history of swearing is a dynamic tug-of-war between two fundamental taboos: the "Holy" (words related to religion) and the "Shit" (words related to sex and the body). For most of Western history, the Holy held sway, but since the Renaissance, the Shit has been in ascendance. The book's most crucial takeaway is that swearing is not merely a sign of a limited vocabulary or moral failing. Instead, it is a uniquely powerful and essential part of human language. Mohr uses a brilliant analogy: "Language is a tool box and swearing is a hammer." You can try to pound in a nail with a screwdriver or pliers, but only the hammer is perfectly designed for the job. Swearing is that hammer—a specialized tool for expressing extreme emotion, relieving pain, and forging social bonds. By understanding its history, we can appreciate its complexity and its irreplaceable role in what it means to be human.