I wonder if "gadzooks" really means "God's hooks", ie. the nails that hung Christ from the cross, or if that's another false etymology.
(Though, really, what else could "gadzooks" mean? It's not like there's any other obvious explanation, as there is with "bloody".)
According to the OED, first part is Gad in the meaning "euphemistic substitute for God/gods". Second part (the zooks bit) they say "element of unknown origin, perhaps hook" , but also make a link to an earlier oath of God's sokinges
My county library service has an OED account, so I can log in with my library card This can leave me chasing down rabbitholes for hours if I'm not careful!
I use bloody all the time (Canada) and use the f word as an intensifier around colleagues all the time. As pond differences have discussed before using the C word or calling someone the C word would get me in extreme difficulties at work and probably get me punched in the face in a bar. Amongst most classes in Canada, it is considered the height of misogyny.
I think it's been said before that the c word is used affectionately by some men. But then this may be true of many swear words. If you can't call your mate a big fat twat, what is the point of friendship?
When I was a child I was enraged at the notion that any word could be forbidden. I felt that unless everyone including children was allowed and encouraged to use all so-called obscene words at all times and in all places, no one was truly free.
Now I understand unless we have different forms of language to use in different situations, we can’t communicate as effectively, so that means that very emotionally charged language, even if the original meaning of the words should not make people upset, is not appropriate in all circumstances. But I still get a thrill out of the idea of passing a law requiring government propaganda trucks to drive through neighborhoods at all times shooting profanity on loudspeakers, to remind us that there is nothing wrong with those words, especially since I have a form of Tourette’s that basically makes me one of those propaganda trucks whether I want to be or not.
I’ve never been in favor of using racial slurs though, and I can see how the c-word is a form of gender slur. Luckily I grew up in a country that doesn’t really use the c word, so I don’t use it, but it’s pretty hard to avoid with my Australian husband. It has worked its way into my Tourette’s as a result, even though I don’t really ever say it out loud intentionally.
The C-word in the UK, to the best of my understanding, is as far removed from its anatomical origins when used as an insult as "bastard" is removed from questions of parental marital status, or indeed "wanker" is of questions of habitual self-gratification.
I was therefore quite surprised to hear it had misogynistic overtones in the US. It just doesn't here. IME its usually used to insult men and carries no connotation of femininity at all. We use these words as insults without real reference to their origins - knob, tit, twat, arsehole and so on.
There is, IME, very little to distinguish fannying around from dicking about. US readers might need to remind themselves of differences in meaning at this point and why we find the term "fanny bag" particularly amusing.
The C-word in the UK, to the best of my understanding, is as far removed from its anatomical origins when used as an insult as "bastard" is removed from questions of parental marital status, or indeed "wanker" is of questions of habitual self-gratification.
I was therefore quite surprised to hear it had misogynistic overtones in the US. It just doesn't here. IME its usually used to insult men and carries no connotation of femininity at all. We use these words as insults without real reference to their origins - knob, tit, twat, arsehole and so on.
There is, IME, very little to distinguish fannying around from dicking about. US readers might need to remind themselves of differences in meaning at this point and why we find the term "fanny bag" particularly amusing.
Well, I’m an an English woman and I find it very misogynistic. As I said above, I associate it with abuse and violence.
The C-word in the UK, to the best of my understanding, is as far removed from its anatomical origins when used as an insult as "bastard" is removed from questions of parental marital status, or indeed "wanker" is of questions of habitual self-gratification.
I was therefore quite surprised to hear it had misogynistic overtones in the US. It just doesn't here. IME its usually used to insult men and carries no connotation of femininity at all. We use these words as insults without real reference to their origins - knob, tit, twat, arsehole and so on.
There is, IME, very little to distinguish fannying around from dicking about. US readers might need to remind themselves of differences in meaning at this point and why we find the term "fanny bag" particularly amusing.
Well, I’m an an English woman and I find it very misogynistic. As I said above, I associate it with abuse and violence.
Yes, which I find strangely different from my experience of it, especially in that I've almost exclusively heard it applied to men.
Is it as an anatomical term or an insult, or both, that you find it misogynistic?
The issue is a part of the female anatomy is used as an insult. It doesn't matter if most people believe the insult is divorced from its original meaning.
I think it's been said before that the c word is used affectionately by some men. But then this may be true of many swear words. If you can't call your mate a big fat twat, what is the point of friendship?
A woman calling her best friend a big fat twat is likely to find herself very much on her own pretty quickly, yet insults seem to be standard amongst blokes as a mark of friendship. I have never understood this.
I absolutely would not regard the C word as any kind of endearment, or a mild word you could use in a professional setting.
The origin of "fanny-pack" is quite interesting. It can be traced back to the medicine pouches of Native Americans. Dare I say it is similar to the sporran? There is even a similar pouch that is traced back 5,000 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_pack
The issue is a part of the female anatomy is used as an insult. It doesn't matter if most people believe the insult is divorced from its original meaning.
It's like saying "That TV show is so gay". Even if you just mean the writing is bad and the acting is lousy, I think most glbqt people and their allies would take exception to using the word "gay" as general slang for "bad".
The C-word in the UK, to the best of my understanding, is as far removed from its anatomical origins when used as an insult as "bastard" is removed from questions of parental marital status, or indeed "wanker" is of questions of habitual self-gratification.
I was therefore quite surprised to hear it had misogynistic overtones in the US. It just doesn't here. IME its usually used to insult men and carries no connotation of femininity at all. We use these words as insults without real reference to their origins - knob, tit, twat, arsehole and so on.
There is, IME, very little to distinguish fannying around from dicking about. US readers might need to remind themselves of differences in meaning at this point and why we find the term "fanny bag" particularly amusing.
Well, I’m an an English woman and I find it very misogynistic. As I said above, I associate it with abuse and violence.
I’m an English woman and I don’t - I don’t know if we are a similar age, whether there is a generational effect or not ?
It depends on context. In some contexts, there are virtually no limits. In others, there may be strict limits. Professional news outlets in the US for the most part eschew profanity, and I hope that doesn't change.
I remember George Melly testifying at the '71 Oz Obscenity Trial, that he addressed his kids as 'little Anglo-Saxon-epithet-according-to-gender'. The judge was gobsmacked. I kinda liked it. At a time when I was as far up my colon as my teeth. I.e. somewhat repressed. But I liked it.
Just came across this article that says there are seven rude phrases indicating low intelligence.
I think "It is what it is" is okay, if someone is expressing a desire for change in a situation where he has no reasonable expectation of change.
Like, say my friend moves to another country, and constantly phones me to complain about the way things are done over there, and how he wishes it was different etc. I might say "Well, it is what it is", meaning that's the way they see fit to run their society, if ya don't like it, go live somewhere else.
As for "obviously", I don't use to make a contestable point sound obvious, but rather when I'm saying something that I think the other person will agree is obvious, and I'm just letting him know that I do as well.
For example, someone asks me what most of my parents think of Justin Trudeau, and I reply "Well, they're Conservatives, so obviously they wouldn't be big fans."
I’m an English woman and I don’t - I don’t know if we are a similar age, whether there is a generational effect or not ?
I’m 54 but I think it is also likely to be a class one in that I was in my teens in the 1980s when it was an everyday word on my council estate by, as mentioned earlier, the type of men who were misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc. This includes one of my older brothers who was all those things. It was used as a term of abuse by men to both men and women, not as an affectionate word. The idea that it is an affectionate term among men appears to be a more recent phenomenon.
I have no problem with historic terms of anatomy, I am a nurse so very relaxed about anatomy. It is the idea that the female anatomy is an insult that I find misogynistic.
Why does a man need to use a term for the female anatomy as an affectionate insult among male friends? Would the same men feel comfortable using the phrase to a woman? If not, why not?
@Stetson, the use of Latinate words and phrases in English, other than the earlier examples KarlLB cites, came into vogue during the Renaissance as a conscious, and rather mannered, effort to 'upgrade' the language.
People wanted to put English on a oar with the classical and Ronance languages so there were a lot of Latinate terms coined during the 16th and 17th centuries. Shakespeare riffs with some of them, 'silken terms precise', in his plays.
Milton was a big one for Latinising the language and he was an egg-head.
You get some good examples in the prose of Sir Thomas Browne from the mid-1600s too.
So yes, academic influence and a desire to elevate English to the status held by classical and other European languages.
Back to the obscene words ...
I agree with @Heavenlyannie that the 'c" word is misogynistic and offensive and when I was growing up it was the most offensive word in the lexicon.
That seems to have changed and also I think there are regional and generational factors at play. 'Twat' was somehow seen as less offensive but certainly not the kind of male-bonding term of endearment it appears to have become in some quarters.
'Dick', 'Dickhead' and 'knob' were never seen as quite offensive for some reason. 'Bell end' seems to have come into vogue more recently.
I have no idea why terms relating to male genitalia should be regarded as less offensive - but it's probably due to a lack of symmetry in the power dynamic.
Whatever the case even though all these terms have tended to drift from their literal anatomical origins, I still find the 'c' word more offensive than the others and would avoid using it for that reason.
I don't know why but I'd feel really guilty if I referred to someone being a 'c***' but wouldn't feel at all bad saying, 'he's acting like a complete arse.'
@Stetson, the use of Latinate words and phrases in English, other than the earlier examples KarlLB cites, came into vogue during the Renaissance as a conscious, and rather mannered, effort to 'upgrade' the language.
People wanted to put English on a oar with the classical and Ronance languages so there were a lot of Latinate terms coined during the 16th and 17th centuries. Shakespeare riffs with some of them, 'silken terms precise', in his plays.
Milton was a big one for Latinising the language and he was an egg-head.
You get some good examples in the prose of Sir Thomas Browne from the mid-1600s too.
So yes, academic influence and a desire to elevate English to the status held by classical and other European languages.
Thanks! But just so I'm clear...
A word like "copulate" didn't become more common because of medieval churchmen or the Battle of Hastings, but because of the the Renaissance vogue for Latin?
nobody in England ever spoke Latin as their normal language. It was only used by officials and the church.
The church was in England and for a lot of monks and cathedral clergy their normal language would have been the language of the church I believe.
The English church of the period pre-conquest and immediately post-conquest was a fairly international institution: there were monks from across Europe and monks going to other places in Europe. I always understood that Latin was the lingua franca monks used among themselves, which would for them have been normal.
I think men also use terms of male anatomy as an affectionate insult.
Some men, perhaps. That hasn’t been my experience as a man.
In my experience, friendly insult among males tends not to take the form of delivering derogatory epithets, but rather derogatory comments about someone's character or lifestyle.
A: Hey, at least I get out to parties every now and then!
B: Yeah, you have lots of free time because you're majoring in sociology. I'm studying engineering, so I have to stay home and do some actual work.
I think men also use terms of male anatomy as an affectionate insult.
Some men, perhaps. That hasn’t been my experience as a man.
In my experience, friendly insult among males tends not to take the form of delivering derogatory epithets, but rather derogatory comments about someone's character or lifestyle.
A: Hey, at least I get out to parties every now and then!
B: Yeah, you have lots of free time because you're majoring in sociology. I'm studying engineering, so I have to stay home and do some actual work.
Not IME. More like
A: How'd you get that bruise?
B: Fell over moving that fucking great plant pot
A: You stupid clumsy twat! What are you like?
I myself would never e use the C word, even in its correct context, despite DH Lawrence’s example. In my mind it is associated in my mind with misogyny, sexism and violence.
As to the F word, the story goes that a little while after WW II, Squadron Leader Seamus O’Reilly was asked to give an inspiring talk at a girl’s convent school. He was a gifted speaker. “We were at 20,000 feet and climbing,” he said, “when these Fokkers came out of the sun and attacked us. It was, to be sure, a right old scrap”.
At this juncture Mother Superior stood up. “Girls,” she said, “I would just like to explain that a ‘Focker’ is a type of German aeroplane.”… “That’s true,” replied the Squadron leader,…. “but these Fokkers were Messerschmitts!”
“Bloody” is nothing more than the contraction of “ By Our Lady”; commonly used in pre ( and peri) Reformation England. ....
@Sojourner have you any authority for such an unequivocal assertion? I've a strong suspicion it was an explanation concocted by to discourage children from copying adults who used the word. 'Bloody' has an entirely normal ordinary meaning as in Duncan's
"What bloody man is this?"
Blood has a sufficient number of unsavoury associations to be quite capable of being an offensive word of its own accord, with no need to invoke more far-fetched derivations.
😂greatly amused at your huffing and puffing. My dear father ( wordsmith extraordinaire and fountain of all knolwledge told me that nigh on 60 years ago when I asked him why “ bloody” was such a naughty word ( and please understand that back then the use of naughty words was -back then- up there with murder rape and sofomy for GLC gels such as meself.
Some time later I read “ The once and future King” by TH White: I noted that Metlin used the adjective “ ber-lady” in suitable context and that was good enough for me.
As for Eric Partridge: he was educated @ Toowoomba Grammar ( home town of belived daughter-out-law) so does he have a mortgage on etymological correctness?
The C-word in the UK, to the best of my understanding, is as far removed from its anatomical origins when used as an insult as "bastard" is removed from questions of parental marital status, or indeed "wanker" is of questions of habitual self-gratification.
I was therefore quite surprised to hear it had misogynistic overtones in the US. It just doesn't here. IME its usually used to insult men and carries no connotation of femininity at all. We use these words as insults without real reference to their origins - knob, tit, twat, arsehole and so on.
There is, IME, very little to distinguish fannying around from dicking about. US readers might need to remind themselves of differences in meaning at this point and why we find the term "fanny bag" particularly amusing.
Well, I’m an an English woman and I find it very misogynistic. As I said above, I associate it with abuse and violence.
Hi HA, just a tune-in from a vulgar Antiodean multipara:
Many years back during delivery of 2nd child I uttered the following words as the head crowned: “ oh my poor little c**t”. There was a shocked silence followed by shrieks of laughter by all present ( except from myself: I just shrieked
Having said that I have no sentimental feelings to the Anglo Saxon word for pudenda and have used the * c word* as a pejorative agin mainly males and one paricularly obnoxious woman, without regret.
Extreme language but as I see it not misogynistic or sexist.
After all I have one ( ageing and largely non functioning as it is)
Great story, Sojourner. My wife was queuing down the market, and there was some pushing, and the old lady in front said, fuck off you old cunt. My wife, smart as a tack, replied, my cunt isn't as old as yours. She looked very pleased with that.
Great story, Sojourner. My wife was queuing down the market, and there was some pushing, and the old lady in front said, fuck off you old cunt. My wife, smart as a tack, replied, my cunt isn't as old as yours. She looked very pleased with that.
Betting the old lady is losing her language filter.
I think men also use terms of male anatomy as an affectionate insult.
Some men, perhaps. That hasn’t been my experience as a man.
In my experience, friendly insult among males tends not to take the form of delivering derogatory epithets, but rather derogatory comments about someone's character or lifestyle.
A: Hey, at least I get out to parties every now and then!
B: Yeah, you have lots of free time because you're majoring in sociology. I'm studying engineering, so I have to stay home and do some actual work.
Not IME. More like
A: How'd you get that bruise?
B: Fell over moving that fucking great plant pot
A: You stupid clumsy twat! What are you like?
As has been noted before, there are Pond and other cultural differences going on here. An exchange like that is foreign to my experience.
It is interesting that each family have their own lexicon of acceptable phrases whose rudeness may surprise an outsider. For example, when Mrs RR and I were staying with her mother in Australia, the house's electricity supply kept failing. We called an electrician, who quickly identified the cause in the junction box. He showed us a blackened and charred wire. "It is," hes said, "Burned to buggery".
This was more than twenty years ago, but Mrs RR and I still use the phrase, "B to B" when things go pear shaped. Usually about the things I've cooked.
Great story, Sojourner. My wife was queuing down the market, and there was some pushing, and the old lady in front said, fuck off you old cunt. My wife, smart as a tack, replied, my cunt isn't as old as yours. She looked very pleased with that.
Betting the old lady is losing her language filter.
In the East End of my grandparents' youth (1920s), I reckon the language filter was generally lost at about 15. I've no idea where @quetzalcoatl 's wife was, but I can picture several marketplaces around England where that wouldn't be completely unexpected language.
Comments
According to the OED, first part is Gad in the meaning "euphemistic substitute for God/gods". Second part (the zooks bit) they say "element of unknown origin, perhaps hook" , but also make a link to an earlier oath of God's sokinges
My county library service has an OED account, so I can log in with my library card
Now I understand unless we have different forms of language to use in different situations, we can’t communicate as effectively, so that means that very emotionally charged language, even if the original meaning of the words should not make people upset, is not appropriate in all circumstances. But I still get a thrill out of the idea of passing a law requiring government propaganda trucks to drive through neighborhoods at all times shooting profanity on loudspeakers, to remind us that there is nothing wrong with those words, especially since I have a form of Tourette’s that basically makes me one of those propaganda trucks whether I want to be or not.
I’ve never been in favor of using racial slurs though, and I can see how the c-word is a form of gender slur. Luckily I grew up in a country that doesn’t really use the c word, so I don’t use it, but it’s pretty hard to avoid with my Australian husband. It has worked its way into my Tourette’s as a result, even though I don’t really ever say it out loud intentionally.
I was therefore quite surprised to hear it had misogynistic overtones in the US. It just doesn't here. IME its usually used to insult men and carries no connotation of femininity at all. We use these words as insults without real reference to their origins - knob, tit, twat, arsehole and so on.
There is, IME, very little to distinguish fannying around from dicking about. US readers might need to remind themselves of differences in meaning at this point and why we find the term "fanny bag" particularly amusing.
Coincidence, I understand. Or at least a shared origin prior to proto-vietic and proto-indo-european.
Yes, which I find strangely different from my experience of it, especially in that I've almost exclusively heard it applied to men.
Is it as an anatomical term or an insult, or both, that you find it misogynistic?
A woman calling her best friend a big fat twat is likely to find herself very much on her own pretty quickly, yet insults seem to be standard amongst blokes as a mark of friendship. I have never understood this.
I absolutely would not regard the C word as any kind of endearment, or a mild word you could use in a professional setting.
Here in America, it use has dropped off quite a bit. Seems like the new word is hip pack, though the term is relatively old. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fanny-pack,+hip+pack&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
I wonder if the Vietnamese picked up the word during the American occupation of their land.
It's like saying "That TV show is so gay". Even if you just mean the writing is bad and the acting is lousy, I think most glbqt people and their allies would take exception to using the word "gay" as general slang for "bad".
I’m an English woman and I don’t - I don’t know if we are a similar age, whether there is a generational effect or not ?
"Overtones" is an understatement. In the US it is outright misogynistic.
It depends on context. In some contexts, there are virtually no limits. In others, there may be strict limits. Professional news outlets in the US for the most part eschew profanity, and I hope that doesn't change.
I suppose that there ar 2 C words, one male the other female. At least here, usage of the male sometimes verges on the acceptable, the female never.
I think "It is what it is" is okay, if someone is expressing a desire for change in a situation where he has no reasonable expectation of change.
Like, say my friend moves to another country, and constantly phones me to complain about the way things are done over there, and how he wishes it was different etc. I might say "Well, it is what it is", meaning that's the way they see fit to run their society, if ya don't like it, go live somewhere else.
As for "obviously", I don't use to make a contestable point sound obvious, but rather when I'm saying something that I think the other person will agree is obvious, and I'm just letting him know that I do as well.
For example, someone asks me what most of my parents think of Justin Trudeau, and I reply "Well, they're Conservatives, so obviously they wouldn't be big fans."
Well, "poor speech etiquette" is what he says, rather than "low intelligence".
But ultimately it's just an opinion piece about phrases he doesn't like.
I was just joking. If you want my honest opinion. Here’s the thing. Right. It is what it is. Obviously. Do you want to... Well, figure out a way?
I have no problem with historic terms of anatomy, I am a nurse so very relaxed about anatomy. It is the idea that the female anatomy is an insult that I find misogynistic.
Why does a man need to use a term for the female anatomy as an affectionate insult among male friends? Would the same men feel comfortable using the phrase to a woman? If not, why not?
People wanted to put English on a oar with the classical and Ronance languages so there were a lot of Latinate terms coined during the 16th and 17th centuries. Shakespeare riffs with some of them, 'silken terms precise', in his plays.
Milton was a big one for Latinising the language and he was an egg-head.
You get some good examples in the prose of Sir Thomas Browne from the mid-1600s too.
So yes, academic influence and a desire to elevate English to the status held by classical and other European languages.
Back to the obscene words ...
I agree with @Heavenlyannie that the 'c" word is misogynistic and offensive and when I was growing up it was the most offensive word in the lexicon.
That seems to have changed and also I think there are regional and generational factors at play. 'Twat' was somehow seen as less offensive but certainly not the kind of male-bonding term of endearment it appears to have become in some quarters.
'Dick', 'Dickhead' and 'knob' were never seen as quite offensive for some reason. 'Bell end' seems to have come into vogue more recently.
I have no idea why terms relating to male genitalia should be regarded as less offensive - but it's probably due to a lack of symmetry in the power dynamic.
Whatever the case even though all these terms have tended to drift from their literal anatomical origins, I still find the 'c' word more offensive than the others and would avoid using it for that reason.
I don't know why but I'd feel really guilty if I referred to someone being a 'c***' but wouldn't feel at all bad saying, 'he's acting like a complete arse.'
Oh yes it is.
The itch to type four characters from the shifted number keys is unbearable.
Thanks! But just so I'm clear...
A word like "copulate" didn't become more common because of medieval churchmen or the Battle of Hastings, but because of the the Renaissance vogue for Latin?
The English church of the period pre-conquest and immediately post-conquest was a fairly international institution: there were monks from across Europe and monks going to other places in Europe. I always understood that Latin was the lingua franca monks used among themselves, which would for them have been normal.
In my experience, friendly insult among males tends not to take the form of delivering derogatory epithets, but rather derogatory comments about someone's character or lifestyle.
A: Hey, at least I get out to parties every now and then!
B: Yeah, you have lots of free time because you're majoring in sociology. I'm studying engineering, so I have to stay home and do some actual work.
Not IME. More like
A: How'd you get that bruise?
B: Fell over moving that fucking great plant pot
A: You stupid clumsy twat! What are you like?
I think I’d have found that hilarious when I was 14
I still do at 5 times that. Hopefully it will only get worse.
As to the F word, the story goes that a little while after WW II, Squadron Leader Seamus O’Reilly was asked to give an inspiring talk at a girl’s convent school. He was a gifted speaker. “We were at 20,000 feet and climbing,” he said, “when these Fokkers came out of the sun and attacked us. It was, to be sure, a right old scrap”.
At this juncture Mother Superior stood up. “Girls,” she said, “I would just like to explain that a ‘Focker’ is a type of German aeroplane.”… “That’s true,” replied the Squadron leader,…. “but these Fokkers were Messerschmitts!”
Definitely. I keep trying to avoid generalizing too much.
Some time later I read “ The once and future King” by TH White: I noted that Metlin used the adjective “ ber-lady” in suitable context and that was good enough for me.
As for Eric Partridge: he was educated @ Toowoomba Grammar ( home town of belived daughter-out-law) so does he have a mortgage on etymological correctness?
I stand uncorrected thanks
Hi HA, just a tune-in from a vulgar Antiodean multipara:
Many years back during delivery of 2nd child I uttered the following words as the head crowned: “ oh my poor little c**t”. There was a shocked silence followed by shrieks of laughter by all present ( except from myself: I just shrieked
Having said that I have no sentimental feelings to the Anglo Saxon word for pudenda and have used the * c word* as a pejorative agin mainly males and one paricularly obnoxious woman, without regret.
Extreme language but as I see it not misogynistic or sexist.
After all I have one ( ageing and largely non functioning as it is)
Betting the old lady is losing her language filter.
This was more than twenty years ago, but Mrs RR and I still use the phrase, "B to B" when things go pear shaped. Usually about the things I've cooked.
In the East End of my grandparents' youth (1920s), I reckon the language filter was generally lost at about 15. I've no idea where @quetzalcoatl 's wife was, but I can picture several marketplaces around England where that wouldn't be completely unexpected language.