The magic of swearing

The Joy of the Word Cunt

The expletive that beats them all

When I was Teaching English as a Foreign Language, there was a list of swear words ranked by how offensive they were to the casual English speaker.

I can’t remember who devised it, probably some idiot at the British Council, but it was divided into four groups.

One Star

One-star words were arse, ass, bloody, bugger, crap, damn, sod, and God.

International language schools are a magnet for evangelical Christians, so it didn’t take long for some teachers to object, and insist that God and Jesus Christ should be in a higher category to reflect their sanctity.

One such bright spark from the JW club even suggested a God Star where words in it could only be used in the presence of the Lord himself. Presumably, she meant only in a church — or was it a Temple? I can’t remember exactly, as she was soon told to fuck off.

Two Star

Two-star: dickhead, bellend, knob, asshole, bollocks, tits, fanny, and shit.

These words didn’t cause much offence to anyone and could be used freely by most people. Even the Christians didn’t care, as by now they’d bound their ears and eyes in protest and were reading The Bible in braille format.

Students were warned, however, that on visiting the US or Canada, the word fanny actually meant asshole, and not slang for the female vulva, as in the UK.

And that a fanny pack is not a prostitute, and is in fact a small bag around your waist used to carry important items in on holiday.

Three Star

Cock, cocksucker, bastard, prick, twat, bitch, fuck, fucker, motherfucker, asshole, gash, pussy, snatch, son of a bitch, wanker.

These are words that are designed to really offend. And were words I first started hearing watching US films on TV in the mid-80s, much to the horror of my conservative parents.

When the word ‘fuck’ was first uttered from ‘some foul-mouthed yanky actor’ as my father would call him, the same silence would descend as when a sex scene appeared on TV. My father would then order us all to bed, so they could watch some dreary BBC period drama — or so they said.

Four Star

Cunt.

That was it for the four-star category. Just the one word. And a word we were meant to teach without actually saying it.

So I wrote it on the whiteboard

CUNT

Then told my students that they should never use it under any circumstances, “Except when addressing a teacher!”

C**t In The Movies

The C-word was first used in mainstream cinema in 1971 in the movie Carnal Knowledge when Jack Nicholson said “Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch!”

Its funniest use though was in The BBC black comedy In The Loop when the director of communications for the British government tells his US counterpart — who disapproves of swearing — that he is ‘A boring F**Cunt.’

This is a very funny, 12-second clip of dark British satire at its best.

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