Olivia: Alright Jackson, you've read the book. Give me your five-word review of Nine Nasty Words. Jackson: Words are weird, people weirder. Olivia: Okay, I'll go with: "Your grandma's swears were lame." Jackson: That's harsh! But... after reading this, probably accurate. It completely changes how you think about the words you hear, and maybe use, every single day. Olivia: It's surprisingly true! And that's exactly what we're diving into with John McWhorter's Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: A Sociolinguistic History of Swearing in English. McWhorter isn't just some shock jock trying to get a rise out of people; he's a renowned linguist and professor at Columbia University. Jackson: Right, and the book was widely acclaimed for taking this taboo subject and turning it into a fascinating intellectual adventure. It’s not just about listing dirty words. It's about why they're dirty. Which brings up the first mind-blowing idea for me: the words we consider truly "bad" today are completely different from what our ancestors feared saying aloud.

Olivia: Exactly. McWhorter lays out this brilliant framework. He says profanity has evolved through three main eras, each reflecting society's biggest taboo at the time. The first era? Religion. For centuries, the most offensive words you could utter were ones that took God's name in vain. Jackson: So what was so bad about words like 'damn' and 'hell'? Today, they feel almost quaint. You hear them on network television. Olivia: Quaint is the perfect word. But back then, they were nuclear. Think about the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta H.M.S. Pinafore. The captain is so proper he sings that he never, ever uses a "big, big D." And the audience in 1878 knew exactly what he meant: "damn." He wouldn't even say the word on stage. Jackson: Wow. So saying 'damn' was like dropping an F-bomb in church? What was the logic there? Olivia: It was all about blasphemy. The idea was that you were literally damning someone to hell, invoking a divine power you had no right to. It was seen as a direct challenge to God's authority. Even more intense was swearing on parts of God's or Jesus's body. Chaucer has characters swearing "By Goddes precious herte"—by God's precious heart. This was seen as tearing the divine body apart, a truly horrific act. Jackson: That is so far from how we think about it now. Is that where all those weird-sounding euphemisms come from? Like people saying 'gosh' or 'heck' or 'gee'? Are those just ghost words? Olivia: They are precisely ghost words! 'Gosh' is a minced oath for 'God.' 'Gee' is a stand-in for 'Jesus.' 'Heck' is a softened 'hell.' People were trying to get the emotional release of the curse without committing the sin. But as McWhorter points out, this shows how much the taboo has faded. He mentions how during the 2012 election, Mitt Romney’s frequent use of 'gosh' and 'gee' made him sound out of touch to many voters, like a character from a bygone era. The power just isn't there anymore. Jackson: It’s true. I can’t imagine anyone clutching their pearls over someone saying ‘gosh.’ But you can see the residue of that power in older media. What about that famous line from Gone with the Wind? "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." That was a huge scandal, right? Olivia: A massive scandal! The producer, David O. Selznick, had to fight the censors of the Motion Picture Production Code and even pay a fine to keep the line in the film in 1939. But what's fascinating is that the Code was already being loosened. They allowed 'damn' and 'hell' if they were "essential for portrayal" or part of a direct quote from a respected source, like a book. It was the beginning of the end for religious profanity's reign. Jackson: So you see the power fading in real time. But then you have a moment, decades later, that shows it’s completely gone. McWhorter talks about the 70s sitcom Good Times. Olivia: Yes, the matriarch Florida Evans, a deeply religious and proper character, finds out her husband has been killed. In her grief, she throws a bowl to the floor and screams, "Damn, damn, damn!" And the studio audience... they don't gasp. They don't protest. They understand her pain. In that moment, 'damn' is no longer a word of blasphemy; it's a word of pure human anguish. The spotlight of sin had moved on. Jackson: Okay, so if religious words lost their power, something had to replace them. The gutter had a vacancy. Enter the F-word.

Olivia: Exactly. Welcome to the second era of profanity: the corporeal. The focus shifts from the heavens to our own bodies—specifically, sex and excretion. And the undisputed kings of this era are, of course, 'fuck' and 'shit.' Jackson: Let's start with the big one. 'Fuck.' McWhorter points out that its origin is a total mystery, which kind of adds to its power. People love to share that myth about it being an acronym for "Fornication Under Consent of the King." Olivia: A complete myth, which he debunks beautifully. The truth is, we're not entirely sure where it came from. It might be from an old Dutch or German word, but it just sort of appears in English in a very sneaky way. The first known written instance is incredible. It’s from 1528, in the margins of a Latin manuscript, where a frustrated monk wrote a note to himself about his boss. Jackson: I love this story. What did he write? Olivia: He wrote, "O d fuckin abbott." What's so revealing is that he abbreviated "damned" to "d"—because that was the truly offensive word he didn't want to write out. But 'fuckin''? He wrote that out fully. It tells you everything about the priorities of the time. Insulting God was a major sin. A sexual verb? Not so much. Jackson: That completely flips the script. The word we see as the ultimate taboo was less offensive than 'damned.' So when did 'fuck' become the powerhouse it is today? Olivia: It was a slow burn. The word went underground for centuries, scrubbed from dictionaries and polite society. But it was always there, bubbling under the surface. McWhorter brings up this amazing piece of evidence from 1906—an affidavit signed by the bartender who worked for Babe Ruth's father. In it, the bartender admits in plain, raw language to having an affair with Ruth's mother, using the word 'fucked'. Jackson: Wow. That makes history feel so much more real and human. These weren't just stiff figures in black-and-white photos. They were people with messy lives who used messy language. Olivia: That's his whole point! Profanity connects us to the raw, unfiltered essence of people. But what really gives 'fuck' its unique power isn't just its taboo history, but its neurology. Jackson: You mean how our brains process it? Olivia: Precisely. Most language is generated in the left hemisphere of the brain, the logical, orderly side. But brain scans show that when we swear, especially in a moment of pain or anger—what linguists call 'cathartic swearing'—the activity lights up on the right side, in the limbic system. Jackson: The lizard brain! The part that controls emotion, impulse, fight-or-flight. Olivia: The very same. So when you stub your toe and scream 'fuck!', you're literally not thinking. It's a pure, unfiltered emotional eruption. It bypasses the logical language centers entirely. That's why it feels so satisfying, and it’s also why people with certain types of brain damage who can't form normal sentences can sometimes still let out a perfectly formed curse. Jackson: That is incredible. It’s like the word is hardwired into a more primal part of us. It’s not just a word; it’s a neurological event. And what about 'shit'? Does it have a similar story? Olivia: It's also from the corporeal era, but its journey is a bit different. It comes from an old Proto-Germanic root and was a perfectly normal, non-taboo word for centuries. The taboo around it is actually more recent, tied to post-Victorian anxieties about hygiene and bodily functions. McWhorter has this great example from the 1933 film 42nd Street, where a showgirl sings a line about a shotgun at her "bel... tummy." She can't even bring herself to say "belly" because it's too close to the messy parts downstairs. Jackson: The squeamishness was real. But like 'fuck,' 'shit' is also incredibly versatile now. You can be 'in the shit,' 'not give a shit,' 'get your shit together,' or call something 'the shit.' Olivia: That versatility is key. These words have evolved from simple nouns or verbs into powerful, multi-purpose grammatical tools. But even their reign as the nastiest words is coming to an end. The spotlight of sin has moved again. Jackson: And this is where the book gets really challenging, and really important.

Olivia: Yes. McWhorter argues we are now in the third era of profanity, where the nastiest words are no longer about offending God or decorum. They're about offending groups of people. They're slurs. Jackson: He makes a powerful case by looking at George Carlin's famous 1972 routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." The list is 'shit,' 'piss,' 'fuck,' 'cunt,' 'cocksucker,' 'motherfucker,' and 'tits.' Olivia: Notice what's missing. The N-word isn't on there. The F-word for gay men isn't on there. Carlin, a master observer of language and culture, didn't include them because in 1972, they weren't yet considered the absolute worst things you could say on a public broadcast. 'Fuck' was still the champion. Jackson: But that has completely changed. Today, you can hear 'fuck' and 'shit' on acclaimed HBO shows constantly. But if a public figure uses a racial or homophobic slur, their career could be over in an instant. Olivia: Think of the examples. Comedian Michael Richards's career effectively ended after he repeatedly shouted the N-word at hecklers in 2006. Celebrity chef Paula Deen lost her empire in 2013 for admitting to using the word in the past. The consequences are swift and severe in a way they just aren't for the older swear words. Jackson: This is where it gets really heavy, because McWhorter has to tackle the N-word itself. And he does it with this incredible linguistic precision. He argues that the word has become so profane, so uniquely toxic, that we've even created a euphemism for it: "the N-word." We do that for no other curse. Olivia: We don't say "the F-word" to mean 'fuck' in the same way. We say it, or we bleep it. But "the N-word" has become a placeholder for a concept so vile we can't even name it. McWhorter's analysis is that the taboo isn't just about the word's history of violence and oppression, which is immense. It's about what the word does. Jackson: Right. It’s not just an insult. It's an act of dehumanization. Is that the core difference? Olivia: That is the absolute core of the third era. Blasphemy was an offense against an all-powerful God. Corporeal swears are an offense against social decorum and our own sense of cleanliness. But slurs are an offense against a person's or a group's fundamental humanity. They are linguistic tools designed to strip people of their personhood and place them in a lower category. Jackson: So when we condemn someone for using a slur, we're not just policing their language. We're enforcing a modern moral code that says the ultimate sin is to deny someone their humanity. Olivia: Exactly. The nastiest word is no longer one that insults God, but one that tries to turn a person into a thing. That is a profound moral evolution for a society, and it's written directly into our language of profanity.

Jackson: So, looking at this whole evolution, it seems like what we consider 'profane' is just a map of our biggest cultural anxieties at any given time. First, it was the fear of God and eternal damnation. Then, it was a deep discomfort with our own messy, mortal bodies. And now, it's a fear of our own capacity for cruelty to each other. Olivia: That’s a perfect summary. McWhorter shows us that these 'nasty words' aren't just noise; they're linguistic fossils that tell the story of our changing values. They reveal what we hold sacred. First it was the divine, now it's human dignity. It's a powerful, and in some ways, a hopeful trajectory. Jackson: It really is. It makes you think about language not as a static set of rules, but as this living, breathing organism that reflects who we are and who we're trying to become. Olivia: And it makes you wonder, what will be the 'nasty words' of the future? If this trend continues, what will our descendants be terrified of saying? What will be the next great taboo? Jackson: That's a fascinating question. And probably a scary one. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What words do you think are gaining or losing their power right now? Find us on our socials and join the conversation. It's a topic that affects all of us, whether we swear like a sailor or not. Olivia: It certainly is. The language we use, and the language we forbid, says everything about us. Jackson: A brilliant and thought-provoking read. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.