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Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever
One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power--and why we love them so much.
Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech--the urgency with which we say "f&*k!" is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger.
Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.
Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech--the urgency with which we say "f&*k!" is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger.
Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.
286 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 4, 2021
853 people are currently reading
6754 people want to read
About the author
John McWhorter
47 books1,712 followersJohn Hamilton McWhorter (Professor McWhorter uses neither his title nor his middle initial as an author) is an American academic and linguist who is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His research specializes on how creole languages form, and how language grammars change as the result of sociohistorical phenomena.
A popular writer, McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New Yorker, among others; he is also contributing editor at The Atlantic and hosts Slate's Lexicon Valley podcas
A popular writer, McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New Yorker, among others; he is also contributing editor at The Atlantic and hosts Slate's Lexicon Valley podcas
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 720 reviews
May 26, 2021
The most important thing I took away from this book by the brilliant and genial John McWhorter was that when white people use the N-word which ends 'er' and hear black people using what they think is the same word, they are in fact hearing a homophone, the N-word, but it ends with 'a'.
One is a word so loaded with appalling racist connotations that it is best not uttered and has been censored from polite speech. But the N-word 'a', best also not spoken by whites because it is a word used within the African-American community only, means friend or 'bro.
Life is change, and words and language evolve just as much as anything else. So now I've been schooled when I hear local guys calling out 'N-word-a', I know that they are not using 'N-word-er' ironically, but a word that has evolved in spelling and meaning.
The discussions of the words, fuck, ass, shit, damn and hell, penis, cunt, bitch and motherfucker were quite interesting and amusing, but I did not enjoy the book quite as much as other ones I've read by this author but it's still a 5 star. btw I listened to the book as it makes sense for a linguistics book but also because the author has a really great voice and is an excellent narrator of his own words.
____________________
Notes on reading
The book starts by asking if we remember George Carlin's 'the seven words you can't say on television routine' - shit, piss, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, cocksucker and tits. So far so good, what are the other two McWhorter is going to add though? My guess is the N word and bitch. And I was right!
One is a word so loaded with appalling racist connotations that it is best not uttered and has been censored from polite speech. But the N-word 'a', best also not spoken by whites because it is a word used within the African-American community only, means friend or 'bro.
Life is change, and words and language evolve just as much as anything else. So now I've been schooled when I hear local guys calling out 'N-word-a', I know that they are not using 'N-word-er' ironically, but a word that has evolved in spelling and meaning.
The discussions of the words, fuck, ass, shit, damn and hell, penis, cunt, bitch and motherfucker were quite interesting and amusing, but I did not enjoy the book quite as much as other ones I've read by this author but it's still a 5 star. btw I listened to the book as it makes sense for a linguistics book but also because the author has a really great voice and is an excellent narrator of his own words.
____________________
Notes on reading
The book starts by asking if we remember George Carlin's 'the seven words you can't say on television routine' - shit, piss, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, cocksucker and tits. So far so good, what are the other two McWhorter is going to add though? My guess is the N word and bitch. And I was right!
September 4, 2021
A warning for those who like to “keep it clean”: in review of this book about profanity and expletives there will be, especially in quotes, copious use of the above. Consider yourselves warned and all that, if that’s not your jam.
————
Regardless whether you use expletives as “punctuation in the casual speech” or prefer to substitute euphemisms even in the situations that call for a “salty” word (although, to bring something that Stephen King once said to mind, it’s really unlikely that you’d yell “oh sugar” instead of “oh shit” when you stab your finger) you cannot argue that profanity holds a certain appeal and quite a bit of linguistic power — “the wholly arbitrary power of curse words” that yet is very real.
It may be easy to dismiss those pearl-clutchers of centuries and even years past that would pale at the casual use of “hell” or “damn” or “shit” or even more recently “fuck” — but it’s not that we are so much more liberated and progressive. It’s just that our taboos - and yes, those are pretty much taboos — are ever-evolving. You can perhaps easily drop the formerly unthinkable curses in casual conversation now, but no polite conversation today will tolerate the once-usual “the N-word” or (that other) “the F-word” or (for Americans, really) “the C-word”. So cut those “quaint” ancestors some slack — to them, the unacceptability of those “D-words” and “H-words” was just in line with the times. We live in the world where religion and body functions have become simply “salty” — but it’s slurs that are the actual profanity of our times. Societal changes and linguistic changes go hand-in-hand, and language is a living this, always evolving, always adapting and changing.
John McWhorter examines not just the history of expletives but also their present and future (“In future English, ‘ass’ could spread to all adjectives”). Have you ever really thought how integrated they are in the language and how over time, in that linguistic way that is beyond fascinating, they have taken on the roles of pronouns and suffixes¹ and unexpected adjectives and adverbs? The evolution to being able to say, for instance, “The hell (or, more modernly, “the fuck”) is this?” or “I’ll fire your ass”² — and be perfectly understood despite grammar here seemingly making no sense?
John McWhorter, a well-known linguist and a professor at Columbia, is great at making all this fun and accessible, but he still illustrates his point with occasional tables and charts, so here’s the taste of his take on “shit” — to give you a (thankfully, metaphorical) flavor of this book’s structure:
McWhorter is an engaging writer, which should not come as a surprise to anyone who’d read any of his articles or listened to him talk. He’s funny (albeit not averse to dad jokes, which works for my sense of humor), he’s thorough, and he knows how to keep your attention riveted with funny and relevant anecdotes while still dropping passages like this one:
And on the funny tangent here — if you’ve ever wondered why “rabbit” is called a rabbit, it’s because the original word for it, “coney” (pronounced, in the fashion of “honey” and “money”, as “cunny”) sounded way too much like what we’ll politely euphemize as “the C-word” — so “rabbit” (which used to be an obscure word for baby-coneys) replaced “coney” as a more acceptable in polite company name for fluffy bunnies (against whom McWhorter seems to harbor a strange dislike. They are not “blank” creatures — they just don’t care about you).
Oh, and there’s the oddity of feeling compelled to say “Bless you” when someone sneezes. Try to explain why exactly ignoring this carryover from old times seems so rude in present times. Good luck with that. In the meantime, you’ll be considered exceptionally rude for politely ignoring the loud-ass sound of a bodily function.
And no, whatever clever theories you’ve heard about the etymology of expletives, they are wrong. “Shit” is not the acronym of “Shipped High In Transit”, and “fuck” does not come from “Fornicating Under King’s Consent” (was there seriously anyone who actually thought those were true???). The sad part is, we’ll never know exactly how some of them came about — but that will not stop us from using them when needed, and that’s quite a bit.
5 stars. This book is the shit, funny as hell and has an assload of information.
————
“Perhaps nothing could make long-gone people seem realer to us than evidence that they used words like fuck. Profanity channels our essence.”
Regardless whether you use expletives as “punctuation in the casual speech” or prefer to substitute euphemisms even in the situations that call for a “salty” word (although, to bring something that Stephen King once said to mind, it’s really unlikely that you’d yell “oh sugar” instead of “oh shit” when you stab your finger) you cannot argue that profanity holds a certain appeal and quite a bit of linguistic power — “the wholly arbitrary power of curse words” that yet is very real.
“A few decades before, in the late 1200s, we find ordinary citizens such as Henry Fuckbeggar and Simon Fuckbutter, and not as scrawls in privy stalls: Mr. Fuckbeggar was in Edward I’s retinue. This was an England in which one could take a stroll down Gropecunt Lane reminiscing fondly about lunches al fresco in Fuckinggrove. One of the things that would most throw us as time travelers to the Middle Ages would be how casually people of all strata used words for sex, excretion, and the body parts involved. Again, in this era one talked nervously around matters of God—what was up there, not down there.”
It may be easy to dismiss those pearl-clutchers of centuries and even years past that would pale at the casual use of “hell” or “damn” or “shit” or even more recently “fuck” — but it’s not that we are so much more liberated and progressive. It’s just that our taboos - and yes, those are pretty much taboos — are ever-evolving. You can perhaps easily drop the formerly unthinkable curses in casual conversation now, but no polite conversation today will tolerate the once-usual “the N-word” or (that other) “the F-word” or (for Americans, really) “the C-word”. So cut those “quaint” ancestors some slack — to them, the unacceptability of those “D-words” and “H-words” was just in line with the times. We live in the world where religion and body functions have become simply “salty” — but it’s slurs that are the actual profanity of our times. Societal changes and linguistic changes go hand-in-hand, and language is a living this, always evolving, always adapting and changing.
“On that matter of evolution, profanity has known three main eras—when the worst you could say was about religion, when the worst you could say was about the body, and when the worst you could say was about groups of people.”
John McWhorter examines not just the history of expletives but also their present and future (“In future English, ‘ass’ could spread to all adjectives”). Have you ever really thought how integrated they are in the language and how over time, in that linguistic way that is beyond fascinating, they have taken on the roles of pronouns and suffixes¹ and unexpected adjectives and adverbs? The evolution to being able to say, for instance, “The hell (or, more modernly, “the fuck”) is this?” or “I’ll fire your ass”² — and be perfectly understood despite grammar here seemingly making no sense?
¹ “One furrow ‘ass’ has waddled down has led to a subtle but vivid nuance in our descriptive abilities. I refer to our use of it as a suffix with adjectives, as in get yourself a big-ass pot and get a job with your broke-ass self.”————
———
² “Okay, but even if my ass is fired, the rest of me will still be coming back to work, and I hope you won’t mind me working assless.”
John McWhorter, a well-known linguist and a professor at Columbia, is great at making all this fun and accessible, but he still illustrates his point with occasional tables and charts, so here’s the taste of his take on “shit” — to give you a (thankfully, metaphorical) flavor of this book’s structure:
“In the same way, the full efflorescence of what shit can mean is so vast that it can seem a kind of chaos. Yet the bloom actually lends itself to, of all things, an elegant analysis, whereby a humble word accreted a magnificent but systematic cobble of meanings.”
“For one, shit provides us with an alternate-world table of reflexive pronouns that convey both person and number—like vanilla ones—but also an attitude toward the person or thing in question, conveying lowdown, unfiltered honesty (your shit). Get your shit together implies a sense of the self without illusions or proprieties. Your goals, your sense of whether they will be achieved, your relationships, warts and all, your temper, your wardrobe choices, your pits, all of it—your shit, man. And yes, it does work even when the evaluator is as biased as your own self, as in I finally got my shit together, man!”
McWhorter is an engaging writer, which should not come as a surprise to anyone who’d read any of his articles or listened to him talk. He’s funny (albeit not averse to dad jokes, which works for my sense of humor), he’s thorough, and he knows how to keep your attention riveted with funny and relevant anecdotes while still dropping passages like this one:
“The first thing you have to know is that what I call real English has two flavors of reflexive pronouns—neutral and affectionate: myself versus my shit, getting my shit together, where clearly the issue is not assembling your feces, but your self, which you love in all of its lowly essence. But also, with the default, nonreflexive pronouns—just I, you, she, we, etc.—English has another two kinds, whether they are subject or object. There’s vanilla (They even have me in it) and dismissive (They even have my ass in it).”
And on the funny tangent here — if you’ve ever wondered why “rabbit” is called a rabbit, it’s because the original word for it, “coney” (pronounced, in the fashion of “honey” and “money”, as “cunny”) sounded way too much like what we’ll politely euphemize as “the C-word” — so “rabbit” (which used to be an obscure word for baby-coneys) replaced “coney” as a more acceptable in polite company name for fluffy bunnies (against whom McWhorter seems to harbor a strange dislike. They are not “blank” creatures — they just don’t care about you).
Oh, and there’s the oddity of feeling compelled to say “Bless you” when someone sneezes. Try to explain why exactly ignoring this carryover from old times seems so rude in present times. Good luck with that. In the meantime, you’ll be considered exceptionally rude for politely ignoring the loud-ass sound of a bodily function.
And no, whatever clever theories you’ve heard about the etymology of expletives, they are wrong. “Shit” is not the acronym of “Shipped High In Transit”, and “fuck” does not come from “Fornicating Under King’s Consent” (was there seriously anyone who actually thought those were true???). The sad part is, we’ll never know exactly how some of them came about — but that will not stop us from using them when needed, and that’s quite a bit.
5 stars. This book is the shit, funny as hell and has an assload of information.
January 16, 2022
"Profanity will always intrigue us with its distinctive status and flavor amid the 'real' words that make up our language. They are both not real words and realer than most others." -- on page 7
I like a good non-fiction tome that can both entertain and educate . . . but Nine Nasty Words did not turn out to be quite as humorous or lively as I thought (or hoped) it would be. Author McWhorter - a linguistics and history professor - is an accomplished man and clearly knows his stuff (plus, he is a Pennsylvania native - woot woot!), but this felt like an uneven book. There were some segments and chapters that felt long-winded or meandering, and clearly I was just more in the mood for and/or expecting a hilarious jaunt through the various swear words that now pepper the American lexicon. Instead, it felt like it was too much in the vein of a scholarly lecture or class presentation - especially considering the copious amount of attention paid to word origins - with a few bright spots being the occasional pop-cultural references. Maybe I just should've watched Eddie Murphy: Raw again ;-)
I like a good non-fiction tome that can both entertain and educate . . . but Nine Nasty Words did not turn out to be quite as humorous or lively as I thought (or hoped) it would be. Author McWhorter - a linguistics and history professor - is an accomplished man and clearly knows his stuff (plus, he is a Pennsylvania native - woot woot!), but this felt like an uneven book. There were some segments and chapters that felt long-winded or meandering, and clearly I was just more in the mood for and/or expecting a hilarious jaunt through the various swear words that now pepper the American lexicon. Instead, it felt like it was too much in the vein of a scholarly lecture or class presentation - especially considering the copious amount of attention paid to word origins - with a few bright spots being the occasional pop-cultural references. Maybe I just should've watched Eddie Murphy: Raw again ;-)
Read
October 10, 2022A look at swearing, mostly in US English, a good chunk of that about Black American English (because they do the best and most linguistically inventive swearing), with glances at UK English. (The author is well aware he's covering US English; the publisher clearly decided it would sell better not to discuss that on the cover. Or just doesn't know there is a difference between America and the world. One of the two.)
This is like 70% amazing. The discussion on how swear words are used on a grammatical level, especially as pronouns, is absolutely fabulous and enlightening, and the author traces swears really well in how the meanings swoop about and the words shed many or all traces of their original lexical status. He also has no truck with just-so stories. Terrific and fascinating analysis.
Particularly interesting is that after we tackle the usual suspects (religion, scatology, sex) we look at the really offensive words, which are now of course slurs. It is probably necessary to specify that the author is a Black American given there's a long and extremely insightful look at the n word, and some less in-depth looks at bitch and faggot (which, I notice, I don't feel impelled to censor, possibly because Brits don't care nearly so much about the former and don't tend to use the latter). Actually, it's very notable how puritanical the US is, as the discussion of cunt and pussy in particular show. I rather wish he'd looked into why the US has chosen to treat three heavily gendered terms (cunt, pussy, and bitch) as far more shocking than they are in British. Is there something scary here?
Which brings me on to the problem, which is that the author--who presumably chose to write a book about offensive words of his own volition--really makes some extraordinary efforts to avoid using them, or making reference to body parts, or anything that might cause offence. He writes like a repressed vicar at points, with some staggeringly prissy circumlocution. I snapped at this:
This means she was wearing swanky boots and a low cut top. It took me a while.
I don't know if this is academic humour? It may well be but there's a lot of it, and also footnotes that pretty much give content warnings for particularly ripe quotes with sexual words, and, like, mate, it's literally a book about swear words, I think you can reasonably assume you don't have to do euphemisms and warnings for naughty bits.
My son once explained a teacher of his to me as "He smokes a pipe on purpose." I feel like this author may smoke a pipe on purpose.
Still absolutely worth it if you're interested in pragmatic linguistics and teasing out how swears evolve grammatically (the pronoun stuff is worth the price of admission by itself), and includes some magnificent example sentences. I highlighted a lot.
This is like 70% amazing. The discussion on how swear words are used on a grammatical level, especially as pronouns, is absolutely fabulous and enlightening, and the author traces swears really well in how the meanings swoop about and the words shed many or all traces of their original lexical status. He also has no truck with just-so stories. Terrific and fascinating analysis.
Particularly interesting is that after we tackle the usual suspects (religion, scatology, sex) we look at the really offensive words, which are now of course slurs. It is probably necessary to specify that the author is a Black American given there's a long and extremely insightful look at the n word, and some less in-depth looks at bitch and faggot (which, I notice, I don't feel impelled to censor, possibly because Brits don't care nearly so much about the former and don't tend to use the latter). Actually, it's very notable how puritanical the US is, as the discussion of cunt and pussy in particular show. I rather wish he'd looked into why the US has chosen to treat three heavily gendered terms (cunt, pussy, and bitch) as far more shocking than they are in British. Is there something scary here?
Which brings me on to the problem, which is that the author--who presumably chose to write a book about offensive words of his own volition--really makes some extraordinary efforts to avoid using them, or making reference to body parts, or anything that might cause offence. He writes like a repressed vicar at points, with some staggeringly prissy circumlocution. I snapped at this:
Someone had some swanky boots on, but the surrounding conversation had lent attention to, well, something further up of a sort that she had a bent toward rendering rather salient
This means she was wearing swanky boots and a low cut top. It took me a while.
I don't know if this is academic humour? It may well be but there's a lot of it, and also footnotes that pretty much give content warnings for particularly ripe quotes with sexual words, and, like, mate, it's literally a book about swear words, I think you can reasonably assume you don't have to do euphemisms and warnings for naughty bits.
My son once explained a teacher of his to me as "He smokes a pipe on purpose." I feel like this author may smoke a pipe on purpose.
Still absolutely worth it if you're interested in pragmatic linguistics and teasing out how swears evolve grammatically (the pronoun stuff is worth the price of admission by itself), and includes some magnificent example sentences. I highlighted a lot.
May 22, 2021
Curse words are versatile as shit. McWhorter explores the etymology and evolution of nine of the most commonly spoken nasty words (with a little hat tip to “hell” and “damn” which aren’t really bad these days). In addition to knowing his shit, McWhorter is very fucking funny. Perfect audio! And an extremely poignant point? Slurs are the worst current-day obscenities. 100% true. This fascinating study is one of my top reads of the year!
November 28, 2021
I had a lot of fun reading Nine Nasty Words with my son (he's 20, in case you're concerned). We took turns reading to each other, and Andrew handled the lion's share of the narration. This was a great opportunity for him to engage with a more scholarly title and encounter unfamiliar words while exercising free license to cuss like a sailor. It was also a great exercise for me to anticipate and provide context for words or famous names that he was struggling to pronounce. Hors d'ouvres? Derrière? Chaucer? Barbara Stanwyck?
John McWhorter is an old soul, and it's fun to engage with his references to music from the 30s or vaudeville or Broadway productions, as well as more contemporary references to Seinfeld or Trump's verbal effluvia. We paused on occasion to look up bawdy Ma Rainey tunes or watch clips from Cool Hand Luke. The conversation could just as easily drift into the middle ages or Shakespeare's London. With each "nasty" word, McWhorter looks at its origins, dispels folk etymologies (such as the pervasive myth of "fornication under consent of the king" or dyke-from-dike), tracks its changes in use and perception over time, and explores the myriad ways language evolves in society.
You're probably wondering what the titular nine words are, as they obviously do not map directly onto George Carlin's infamous 1972 list of "seven words you can never say on television". McWhorter references that list regularly and addresses the positional shifts over the past 50 years. (50?!! Crazy.) The chapter list should give you a good idea of what's addressed, though many related and antiquated variants come up along the way:
1. Damn and Hell: English's First Bad Words
2. What Is It About Fuck?
3. Profanity and Shit?
4. A Kick-Ass Little Word
5. Those Certain Parts
6. Why Do We Call It "The N-Word"?
7. The Other F-Word
8. Being in Total Control, Honey!
9. A Motherfucking Addendum
In addition to our discussions of recondite words and cultural references, the book sparked nuanced conversation around the words themselves and how we use them in the world. The most obvious red flag here is the N-word, which McWhorter (himself a Black man) sets up thoughtfully and uses as sparingly as possible (which is still quite a bit), and which we continued to refer to as "N-word" or "N-word-with-an-A". Other words we used, but mindful of our intentions and who was within earshot. McWhorter is a conscientious guide, unpacking the various shades of imprecation, slur and profanity in his erudite, professorial and good-humored manner.
John McWhorter is an old soul, and it's fun to engage with his references to music from the 30s or vaudeville or Broadway productions, as well as more contemporary references to Seinfeld or Trump's verbal effluvia. We paused on occasion to look up bawdy Ma Rainey tunes or watch clips from Cool Hand Luke. The conversation could just as easily drift into the middle ages or Shakespeare's London. With each "nasty" word, McWhorter looks at its origins, dispels folk etymologies (such as the pervasive myth of "fornication under consent of the king" or dyke-from-dike), tracks its changes in use and perception over time, and explores the myriad ways language evolves in society.
You're probably wondering what the titular nine words are, as they obviously do not map directly onto George Carlin's infamous 1972 list of "seven words you can never say on television". McWhorter references that list regularly and addresses the positional shifts over the past 50 years. (50?!! Crazy.) The chapter list should give you a good idea of what's addressed, though many related and antiquated variants come up along the way:
1. Damn and Hell: English's First Bad Words
2. What Is It About Fuck?
3. Profanity and Shit?
4. A Kick-Ass Little Word
5. Those Certain Parts
6. Why Do We Call It "The N-Word"?
7. The Other F-Word
8. Being in Total Control, Honey!
9. A Motherfucking Addendum
In addition to our discussions of recondite words and cultural references, the book sparked nuanced conversation around the words themselves and how we use them in the world. The most obvious red flag here is the N-word, which McWhorter (himself a Black man) sets up thoughtfully and uses as sparingly as possible (which is still quite a bit), and which we continued to refer to as "N-word" or "N-word-with-an-A". Other words we used, but mindful of our intentions and who was within earshot. McWhorter is a conscientious guide, unpacking the various shades of imprecation, slur and profanity in his erudite, professorial and good-humored manner.
August 1, 2021
Hot damn!
31 July 2021
So cool. I appreciate how great McWhorter is at explaining shit. Which is a much more niche skill than many people realize. Well, maybe not now after all the parents have spent an involuntary year homeschooling. Seriously, he's great at making a case, taking you through the evidence, showing why other theories are crap. Plus dad jokes, which make everyone else seem so cool by comparison, even me. Opera camp!?! He slays.
McWhorter's book made me think of a favorite quote of mine on swearing. Googling to get it exactly to include I became seriously annoyed that it appears everywhere on the internets missing a key word, such that it is obvious the same source is being widely republished without anyone reading it. Now I doubt that any of the supposed quotes from Inherit the Wind that I found are correct in the absence of an actual copy of the play open in front of me. Regardless, I am compelled to share it, because I only have like three quotes in my brain, and also to apologize for the confusion I created in writing this absurdly long and pointless note. As I recall from like 40 years ago, in Inherit the Wind Lawrence and Lee had the Darrow character say something like: There are damn few words that everybody understands, it would be a shame not to use all of them. I took that very much to heart.
Sorry, karen, for bollixing that up.
Library copy
31 July 2021
So cool. I appreciate how great McWhorter is at explaining shit. Which is a much more niche skill than many people realize. Well, maybe not now after all the parents have spent an involuntary year homeschooling. Seriously, he's great at making a case, taking you through the evidence, showing why other theories are crap. Plus dad jokes, which make everyone else seem so cool by comparison, even me. Opera camp!?! He slays.
McWhorter's book made me think of a favorite quote of mine on swearing. Googling to get it exactly to include I became seriously annoyed that it appears everywhere on the internets missing a key word, such that it is obvious the same source is being widely republished without anyone reading it. Now I doubt that any of the supposed quotes from Inherit the Wind that I found are correct in the absence of an actual copy of the play open in front of me. Regardless, I am compelled to share it, because I only have like three quotes in my brain, and also to apologize for the confusion I created in writing this absurdly long and pointless note. As I recall from like 40 years ago, in Inherit the Wind Lawrence and Lee had the Darrow character say something like: There are damn few words that everybody understands, it would be a shame not to use all of them. I took that very much to heart.
Sorry, karen, for bollixing that up.
Library copy
July 20, 2023
A short, irreverent history of English’s dirtiest words—more than nine, actually! It’s a fun enough read, entertaining and informative, and if you think reading a history of profanity will make you giggle like a middle schooler, you should definitely give it a try. I didn’t love reading it as much as I thought I would when only flipping through it—in part because McWhorter seems to have a boundless love of 20th century pop culture (which I have no interest in at all), tracing seemingly every usage of the words in TV, movies, musicals, songs, even moments when people just mouthed them in silent movies! Once I started skimming the pop culture trivia, I enjoyed it more.
Highlights include:
- A history of swearing in English: from the medieval days when the worst you could say was about religion (damn, hell) to later centuries when the worst you could say was about the body (fuck, shit), to the modern day when the worst you can say is slurs about groups of people (“the n-word,” for instance, has become so taboo that it’s now often considered inappropriate to say it even to discuss it, thus, as McWhorter convincingly argues, qualifying it as today’s true profanity).
- Tracing the etymology of various words, including exploding various myths about them. Some of these myths I didn’t know (claims that “shit” and “fuck” began as acronyms. Short answer: they didn’t); some I did, which made those bits more interesting. Yes, “faggot” used to mean “a bundle of sticks.” No, it didn’t become a slur for gay men via a burning-at-the-stake connection: it only became a slur in 20th century America, and burning at the stake wasn’t the prescribed execution method for homosexuality in old England anyway. Rather, from “bundle of sticks” it came to be used for something like “straw man,” not in the sense of deliberately caricatured arguments, but for scarecrows, or fake employees added to the payroll for embezzlement. From there the trajectory seems to have been useless person -> insult for a woman -> insult for a gay man.
- Also, McWhorter includes a bunch of entertaining charts showing all the ways various bits of profanity are actually pronouns in “real English.” For instance, references to someone’s ass (“get your ass over here”) often aren’t actually talking about the posterior. That sentence really just means “get yourself over here,” hence, “your ass” is a pronoun! Yes, yes, it’s two words, but it’s pronounced like one and the stress, tellingly, is not on “ass.” In the absence of writing, in a generation or two “your ass” might become standard, with the meaning of the “ass” part lost in the shuffle!
If all of this interests you then you should definitely check it out. I don’t always buy all McWhorter’s theories—at times the force of his opinions seems to outweigh the evidence for them—and I suspect none of his other books will ever live up to The Power of Babel for me, but seeing an actual linguist’s dive into profanity was pretty fun on the whole and left me with a few new factoids.
UPDATE: If you’re interested in the subject but would like more social and cultural history and less recent pop culture, check out Holy Shit, which I wound up preferring to this one. McWhorter still has the profanity-as-pronouns market cornered, though.
Highlights include:
- A history of swearing in English: from the medieval days when the worst you could say was about religion (damn, hell) to later centuries when the worst you could say was about the body (fuck, shit), to the modern day when the worst you can say is slurs about groups of people (“the n-word,” for instance, has become so taboo that it’s now often considered inappropriate to say it even to discuss it, thus, as McWhorter convincingly argues, qualifying it as today’s true profanity).
- Tracing the etymology of various words, including exploding various myths about them. Some of these myths I didn’t know (claims that “shit” and “fuck” began as acronyms. Short answer: they didn’t); some I did, which made those bits more interesting. Yes, “faggot” used to mean “a bundle of sticks.” No, it didn’t become a slur for gay men via a burning-at-the-stake connection: it only became a slur in 20th century America, and burning at the stake wasn’t the prescribed execution method for homosexuality in old England anyway. Rather, from “bundle of sticks” it came to be used for something like “straw man,” not in the sense of deliberately caricatured arguments, but for scarecrows, or fake employees added to the payroll for embezzlement. From there the trajectory seems to have been useless person -> insult for a woman -> insult for a gay man.
- Also, McWhorter includes a bunch of entertaining charts showing all the ways various bits of profanity are actually pronouns in “real English.” For instance, references to someone’s ass (“get your ass over here”) often aren’t actually talking about the posterior. That sentence really just means “get yourself over here,” hence, “your ass” is a pronoun! Yes, yes, it’s two words, but it’s pronounced like one and the stress, tellingly, is not on “ass.” In the absence of writing, in a generation or two “your ass” might become standard, with the meaning of the “ass” part lost in the shuffle!
If all of this interests you then you should definitely check it out. I don’t always buy all McWhorter’s theories—at times the force of his opinions seems to outweigh the evidence for them—and I suspect none of his other books will ever live up to The Power of Babel for me, but seeing an actual linguist’s dive into profanity was pretty fun on the whole and left me with a few new factoids.
UPDATE: If you’re interested in the subject but would like more social and cultural history and less recent pop culture, check out Holy Shit, which I wound up preferring to this one. McWhorter still has the profanity-as-pronouns market cornered, though.
September 22, 2020
I loved this book! Words and their origins have always been a fascinating subject to me. So to have one focused on swear words was perfect.
McWhorter focuses on nine big curse words (damn/hell, f**k, s**t. a$$, 2 words that describe genitalia, n-word, the other f-word, and b***h) to separate each chapter and delves into what made them bad and where they possibly came from. He also looks at societal changes as how words evolved from normal to taboo and vice-versa. There was a lot I didn't know and the facts he lays out are eye-opening, giving a peek into the darker parts of history you'd never learn in school. It also makes me look great in parties, spouting off fun facts. :)
Despite the heavy topics that come up from these nine nasty words, McWhorter's writing is approachable and lighthearted, poking fun at history and alleviating the awkwardness that comes with talking about certain words. When he discusses his most controversial word (the n-word), he does so with keen awareness that he addresses directly on page one of that chapter. He knows this word sparks uneasy feelings, but also knows it's important to understand where it came from and where it might be going next based on sociological clues.
I think any reader who has used at least half the words on the list will enjoy learning about how that word entered their vocabulary.
**Read thanks to an ARC from Avery**
McWhorter focuses on nine big curse words (damn/hell, f**k, s**t. a$$, 2 words that describe genitalia, n-word, the other f-word, and b***h) to separate each chapter and delves into what made them bad and where they possibly came from. He also looks at societal changes as how words evolved from normal to taboo and vice-versa. There was a lot I didn't know and the facts he lays out are eye-opening, giving a peek into the darker parts of history you'd never learn in school. It also makes me look great in parties, spouting off fun facts. :)
Despite the heavy topics that come up from these nine nasty words, McWhorter's writing is approachable and lighthearted, poking fun at history and alleviating the awkwardness that comes with talking about certain words. When he discusses his most controversial word (the n-word), he does so with keen awareness that he addresses directly on page one of that chapter. He knows this word sparks uneasy feelings, but also knows it's important to understand where it came from and where it might be going next based on sociological clues.
I think any reader who has used at least half the words on the list will enjoy learning about how that word entered their vocabulary.
**Read thanks to an ARC from Avery**
August 29, 2021
4.5 stars
For a word nerd like me, this was a thoroughly enjoyable audio book, read by the author in a conversational, often whimsical style. There's actually a chuckle in his voice at some of the funnier bits, which I loved.
Given the subject and the slightly inflammatory cover, you might think this is a book full of cheap titillation about naughty words. You would be wrong. Sure, there's humor, because the way people use and modify curse words is funny. But the book is more often a scholarly exploration of the history and evolution of our most common swear words and insults. Where did these words come from, and why did they become forbidden, when other similar words are considered perfectly acceptable? How did the hierarchy of bad words come to be, and how and why has it changed throughout history? There was a time when damn and hell were considered worse than f**k and s**t.
One of the most interesting things to me about "dirty" words has always been that they are almost never used in a literal sense. When we say, "I need to get my s**t together," we're not talking about excrement. McWhorter covers this topic in some detail, and it's quite amusing.
The only reason I'm not giving this five stars is because some of his explanations of the origins of words and expressions became so convoluted that I couldn't follow them. This may be cleared up when I read the book in print, which I plan to do because the audio book moves so fast.
And oh, by the way, if I ever go to Russia I will do my best to avoid pear trees. The Russian expression for twiddling your thumbs when you're bored is "swing your dick at a pear tree." I've already encountered enough bored dick swingers to last me several lifetimes.
May 17, 2021
With one major exception (see below), I loved this book. In fact, I'd say it's one of John McWhorter's best books-- if not his best book-- yet. (I'm referencing his popular linguistics books when saying that, I haven't read his scholarly work or his books on race.)
I particularly like that, in addition to discussing the individual words themselves, he provided a compelling historical framework for how profanity has changed, over the centuries (e.g. once words about God spoken in vain or lightly were taboo-- then it became words about the body and its functions-- and now it's words that are slurs towards groups) as well as suggesting reasons for these changes.
I also appreciated how he used his discussions of individual words and their variants (e.g. in addition to 'bitch,' he talks about son-of-a-bitch, bitchin', etc.). not to just to discuss etymologies, but also to illuminate processes of language change in general, such as semantic change, grammaticalization, etc.
And, as always, McWhorter's prose is entertaining, witty and filled with examples both serious (e.g. going back to an old Scots-language document for the first recorded use of the 'f-word' in an English dialect) and playful (citing examples of swear words in old cartoons) as well as some pretty funny personal anecdotes On many occasions, I laughed out loud while reading this (or, rather, while istening to it as an audiobook.)
However, I must take umbrage with one of McWhorter's unnecessary digressions, in which he makes a bunch of mean-spirited and ignorant comments about rabbits. (FYI: The fact that McWhorter mentions rabbits at all isn't entirely irrelevant; the word 'rabbit' does have a tangential connection to the 'c' word.). However, after making his etymological aside, McWhorter goes off on an extended rant about how 'blank' and vacuous they are as animals and pets. As someone who had had four pet rabbits, each with his/her own distinct personality, and who knows how inquisitive, playful, and sociable they can be, I found this off-putting and just plain wrong. My guess is that McWhorter's experience with rabbits is limited to having seen or kept them in in cages that were too small, where they had little room to run and explore, were given no toys, and where they were generally neglected socially by their caretakers-- such that he has never witnessed the complex, intelligent, inquisitive, playful, and imperious behavior can display when they are treated well and give the same, space, freedom and attention that one would give a cat or a dog. And I understand that not everyone has had a chance to see a happy, healthy, house rabbit who is treated as.a true pet rather than a toy-- let alone spent enough time with them to be able to read their highly expressive body language. So McWhorter isn't alone in his misinformed attitude. Still, he chose to make the rant here, despite his lack of knowledge on the subject and its irrelevance to linguistics, so I'm deducting one star from what would have otherwise been a five-star review.
I particularly like that, in addition to discussing the individual words themselves, he provided a compelling historical framework for how profanity has changed, over the centuries (e.g. once words about God spoken in vain or lightly were taboo-- then it became words about the body and its functions-- and now it's words that are slurs towards groups) as well as suggesting reasons for these changes.
I also appreciated how he used his discussions of individual words and their variants (e.g. in addition to 'bitch,' he talks about son-of-a-bitch, bitchin', etc.). not to just to discuss etymologies, but also to illuminate processes of language change in general, such as semantic change, grammaticalization, etc.
And, as always, McWhorter's prose is entertaining, witty and filled with examples both serious (e.g. going back to an old Scots-language document for the first recorded use of the 'f-word' in an English dialect) and playful (citing examples of swear words in old cartoons) as well as some pretty funny personal anecdotes On many occasions, I laughed out loud while reading this (or, rather, while istening to it as an audiobook.)
However, I must take umbrage with one of McWhorter's unnecessary digressions, in which he makes a bunch of mean-spirited and ignorant comments about rabbits. (FYI: The fact that McWhorter mentions rabbits at all isn't entirely irrelevant; the word 'rabbit' does have a tangential connection to the 'c' word.). However, after making his etymological aside, McWhorter goes off on an extended rant about how 'blank' and vacuous they are as animals and pets. As someone who had had four pet rabbits, each with his/her own distinct personality, and who knows how inquisitive, playful, and sociable they can be, I found this off-putting and just plain wrong. My guess is that McWhorter's experience with rabbits is limited to having seen or kept them in in cages that were too small, where they had little room to run and explore, were given no toys, and where they were generally neglected socially by their caretakers-- such that he has never witnessed the complex, intelligent, inquisitive, playful, and imperious behavior can display when they are treated well and give the same, space, freedom and attention that one would give a cat or a dog. And I understand that not everyone has had a chance to see a happy, healthy, house rabbit who is treated as.a true pet rather than a toy-- let alone spent enough time with them to be able to read their highly expressive body language. So McWhorter isn't alone in his misinformed attitude. Still, he chose to make the rant here, despite his lack of knowledge on the subject and its irrelevance to linguistics, so I'm deducting one star from what would have otherwise been a five-star review.
September 4, 2021
Fuck yeah! A linguist investigates the origins and evolution of various swear words. He describes the shift in American English from the worst words you can say being related to religion (hell, damn, God's hooks/gadzooks) to being related to the body (shit, cocksucker, motherfucker) to being actual slurs against group of people (the n-word, the f-word that relates to gay people). Get the audio version if you can, as McWhorter is hilarious and uses so many different voices that he reminded me of Mel Blanc. I loved the author's anecdote about being a kid and going to opera camp. Nerds are the best people.
Two quibbles: I was surprised McWhorter didn't mention the r-word, which used to be commonly used about people with Down syndrome and similar disabilities but is often considered taboo now. There's more information at https://specialolympicsri.org/unified.... Also, he doesn't know how to pronounce Catriona. It sounds just like Katrina in English. He knows so many languages that I guess I'm a little put out that he doesn't recognize Gaelic.
Two quibbles: I was surprised McWhorter didn't mention the r-word, which used to be commonly used about people with Down syndrome and similar disabilities but is often considered taboo now. There's more information at https://specialolympicsri.org/unified.... Also, he doesn't know how to pronounce Catriona. It sounds just like Katrina in English. He knows so many languages that I guess I'm a little put out that he doesn't recognize Gaelic.
July 20, 2021
Hot ****, this **** was interesting as ****. I could not ****in' believe how varied and interesting the history of our ****in' curses is. Every **** is broken down and examined from it's etymological background (fancy talk for word origins), historical use, social use (and ramifications), and it's accepted meanings. You will learn about every major swear from **** to ****, and how they reflect us as a people, and the way we describe and evaluate the world around us.
Make no mistake, this **** is both hilarious and heavy.
It's the type of title that makes you want to read everything else McWhorter has ever done.
Make no mistake, this **** is both hilarious and heavy.
It's the type of title that makes you want to read everything else McWhorter has ever done.
June 20, 2021
Everything he writes is hot shit. I learned a fucking lot.
June 25, 2021
[…] your ass means you, and thus your ass is a pronoun. You only notice the butt facet if you have occasion to think about it. No one sane would ever respond [to “I’m gonna fire your ass”], “Okay, but even if my ass is fired, the rest of me will still be coming back to work, and I hope you won’t mind me working assless.”The focus of this book is swear words and their evolution over the centuries.
According to the author, the first words considered obscene in English were words like hell and damn whose flippant use trivialized religious concepts. Then, Protestantism made holiness more about an inward focus on personal uprightness, and rising prosperity and the emergence of heating technologies (meaning bigger houses with more rooms) made universal things like emptying one’s bowels and having sex private matters. The body became “dirty” and impure and threatened to lead one into temptation, and thus words like shit and fuck—normal and inoffensive before—became the new unmentionables, with hell and damn losing their shock value. The sexual revolution of the 20th century later liberalized attitudes about the body, and now the worst, absolutely unutterable words are those that malign groups. That is, slurs like the n-word, the c-word, and the other f-word. (McWhorter writes them out in the book, which I think was the right call.)
McWhorter embraces real English as opposed to the prim book English we’re taught in school, delightedly demonstrating how various cuss words have rejigged our grammar. Example: adjectival ass—silly-ass, snobby-ass, raggedy-ass—used to convey counter-expectation. There are also fascinating discussions about how ass, shit, and bitch are now used as pronouns. I loved an aside on expletive infixation, showing how native speakers know by instinct that it’s Cinci-fucking-nati, not Cin-fucking-cinnati and certainly not Cincinna-fucking-ti. And Mi-fucking-ami or Bos-fucking-ton are plainly wrong, but yes to Colo-fucking-rado or Massa-fucking-chusetts.
As a black American, McWhorter’s nuanced insights into the n-word and the version that ends with “a” changed my (underinformed) mind on a few things. And reading that he curses around his kids was kind of liberating, as was the reassurance that children are smart enough to pick up on lexical appropriateness faster and better than their nervous parents tend to suppose.
Overall, an informative read that surprised and charmed me, especially when it sent me running to re-watch a Fawlty Towers episode (“Waldorf Salad”). I’m also certain it would have been great to listen to as an audiobook—if you’ve never had the pleasure of listening to McWhorter, head over to YouTube and treat yourself. He’s been my intellectual crush for a while now (on political and cultural topics).
May 20, 2023
Yeah, I know I'm a pastor (and not a particularly edgy one), and this is a book about profanity. Obviously, if you are bothered by reading or hearing naughty words, this isn't the book for you, and you don't need to take my enjoyment of this book as an endorsement of the use of any of these words.
But, specifically as a pastor, I found this book fascinating on multiple levels. McWhorter examines the the history and usage of every variation of all the curse words you can think of. And what is revealed is a history of the shifting moral sensitivities of English-speaking world. Early profanity were literally that, profaning something holy. They were words about God. Over time, words about the body became more taboo, specifically regarding reproduction and defecation. And then, things shifted so that derisive terms about people groups became the most off-limits. That evolution of moral sensibilities is very illuminating.
The linguistic and grammatical analysis was so much fun, since swearing is a great case study in the natural evolution of language. It was a perfect picture of how words actually work in real life, not just in print. To think that swear words almost always eventually become pronouns was shocking at first and then obvious upon demonstration.
It also included all sorts of amazing tidbits about culture, race, and gender. Swearing tells us more about our real values, relationships, and norms than most "official" statements, because profanity is about how people actually feel, not just what they think they ought to care about.
But, specifically as a pastor, I found this book fascinating on multiple levels. McWhorter examines the the history and usage of every variation of all the curse words you can think of. And what is revealed is a history of the shifting moral sensitivities of English-speaking world. Early profanity were literally that, profaning something holy. They were words about God. Over time, words about the body became more taboo, specifically regarding reproduction and defecation. And then, things shifted so that derisive terms about people groups became the most off-limits. That evolution of moral sensibilities is very illuminating.
The linguistic and grammatical analysis was so much fun, since swearing is a great case study in the natural evolution of language. It was a perfect picture of how words actually work in real life, not just in print. To think that swear words almost always eventually become pronouns was shocking at first and then obvious upon demonstration.
It also included all sorts of amazing tidbits about culture, race, and gender. Swearing tells us more about our real values, relationships, and norms than most "official" statements, because profanity is about how people actually feel, not just what they think they ought to care about.
August 25, 2021
As someone who likes to say "Friday is my second favorite F word", I knew I had to pick this up and learn about the etymology of my favorite swear word. This book did not disappoint, and also goes on to discuss the etymology behind other words such as "shit" and "damn". McWhorter's writing style is very conversational which makes what he's telling you easy to digest. It's like if you met him at a dinner party and he was like "do you wanna know the etymology of some curse words?" Anyway, if you like learning about the etymology of words, this is the book for you.
June 26, 2021
Lively and informative, but it turns out I'm not as interested in this topic as I thought I'd be. Also, as another reviewer noted, I think I'd rather listen to McWhorter than read him. His writing style is conversational, energetic and anecdotal.
October 17, 2022
A silly yet informative linguistical romp exploring the origins of nine dirty words and the sometimes bizarre evolution of their usage. And no, I shan’t list them here.
The book is full of curious tidbits and amusing anecdotes. I won’t be listing those either.
But I will relay one interesting observation: McWhorter shows that during the Middle Ages, the words that were considered most profane were those that were religiously blasphemous. Later, the worst words became those referring to the body or bodily functions. In recent times, the most objectionable words are those pertaining to certain people groups. It would seem this transition simply reflects what the culture of each era holds to be most sacred.
The book is full of curious tidbits and amusing anecdotes. I won’t be listing those either.
But I will relay one interesting observation: McWhorter shows that during the Middle Ages, the words that were considered most profane were those that were religiously blasphemous. Later, the worst words became those referring to the body or bodily functions. In recent times, the most objectionable words are those pertaining to certain people groups. It would seem this transition simply reflects what the culture of each era holds to be most sacred.
September 24, 2021
"On that matter of evolution, profanity has known three main eras— when the worst you could say was about religion, when the worst you could say was about the body, and when the worst you could say was about groups of people. The accumulation of those taboos is why “just words” like hell, shit, and nigger respectively harbor such sting. Onlookers have sucked in their breath to hear the medieval person damning someone to hell, the twenties flapper telling someone to go fuck themselves, and our neighbor calling someone a bitch. This book will explain why."
Although this was an interesting and somewhat fun short read, it was not without its flaws...
I have followed the author online for a few years now, via his many podcast appearances and other talks. He originally caught my attention with his discussion on "the religion of antiracism."
Author John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and associate professor of linguistics in the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University, where he teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history.
John McWhorter:
McWhorter covers the lengthy history of nine modern swear words here; as the book's title implies. He goes into quite a bit of detail in his writing.
The audiobook version of this book is also read by the author, which is always nice. McWhorter gives an enthusiastic reading of the material here.
Unfortunately, despite McWhorter's best efforts, I found that much of his writing didn't really resonate with me. He tends to go off on long-winded tangents a bit too often for my tastes. His writing style sees him bog the reader down in a torrent of tedium and minutia; effectively losing the forest for the trees. He goes into the fine detail of many alternate spellings and pronunciations through history in a somewhat rapid-fire manner, jumping around quite often.
I found this to be similar to his offering from The Great Courses, The Story of Human Language, which I did not enjoy for the same reason...
This may well be a subjective thing, as I see that the book's aggregate score is pretty high. I am fairly particular about how engaging and readable my books are, and I am admittedly not a fan of long-winded, tedious, unengaging writing. Sadly, this will see McWhorter's book penalized here.
**************************
Despite being excited to start this one, McWhorter's writing just did not resonate well with me.
Thankfully, this was a short book. If it were any longer, I would have put it down...
2 stars.
Although this was an interesting and somewhat fun short read, it was not without its flaws...
I have followed the author online for a few years now, via his many podcast appearances and other talks. He originally caught my attention with his discussion on "the religion of antiracism."
Author John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and associate professor of linguistics in the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University, where he teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history.
John McWhorter:
McWhorter covers the lengthy history of nine modern swear words here; as the book's title implies. He goes into quite a bit of detail in his writing.
The audiobook version of this book is also read by the author, which is always nice. McWhorter gives an enthusiastic reading of the material here.
Unfortunately, despite McWhorter's best efforts, I found that much of his writing didn't really resonate with me. He tends to go off on long-winded tangents a bit too often for my tastes. His writing style sees him bog the reader down in a torrent of tedium and minutia; effectively losing the forest for the trees. He goes into the fine detail of many alternate spellings and pronunciations through history in a somewhat rapid-fire manner, jumping around quite often.
I found this to be similar to his offering from The Great Courses, The Story of Human Language, which I did not enjoy for the same reason...
This may well be a subjective thing, as I see that the book's aggregate score is pretty high. I am fairly particular about how engaging and readable my books are, and I am admittedly not a fan of long-winded, tedious, unengaging writing. Sadly, this will see McWhorter's book penalized here.
**************************
Despite being excited to start this one, McWhorter's writing just did not resonate well with me.
Thankfully, this was a short book. If it were any longer, I would have put it down...
2 stars.
August 20, 2021
Amazing that someone can take a subject as inherently interesting as "Nine Nasty Words" and make it boring. I really tried to get into this one, and should add that I have studied linguistics and didn't find his use of the discipline off-putting, but it defeated me. After reading, I checked some of the reviews and can only conclude that either I'm a real outlier or we were reading different books. Try the prologue if you like to get a taste.
March 3, 2022
An interesting read about how certain words became "nasty" words.
Here are the chapters:
(1) Damn and Hell: English's First Bad Word
(2) What Is It about F**k
(3) Profanity and Sh*t
(4) A Kick-Ass Little Word
(5) Those Certain Parts
(6) Why Do We Call It "The N'Word"
(7) The Other F'Word
(8) Being in Total Control, Honey
(9) A MotherF**cking Addendum
Here are the chapters:
(1) Damn and Hell: English's First Bad Word
(2) What Is It about F**k
(3) Profanity and Sh*t
(4) A Kick-Ass Little Word
(5) Those Certain Parts
(6) Why Do We Call It "The N'Word"
(7) The Other F'Word
(8) Being in Total Control, Honey
(9) A MotherF**cking Addendum
Audiobook source: Libby
Narrator: John McWhorter
Length: 6H 52M
June 14, 2021
Never looking at Folgers the same
August 5, 2021
A damn good book (sorry, couldn't resist).
November 12, 2022
Super interesting book! I'm generally pretty fascinated by etymology, and a book all about the history and evolution of swear words is pretty much right up my alley. Generally well-written and engaging, though there were a number of times where the author sort of seemed to talk around a point, almost as if he didn't want to be too graphic/explicit, which is just a little odd in a book about, and filled with, profanity. Still a minor quibble overall!
February 21, 2022
If you love learning how language evolved, John McWhorter’s Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever is for you. This relatively short book (under 300 pages) is a fascinating read on the most fascinating words in the English language: profanities.
McWhorter first gives you an overview of curses and profanity, along with a little neuroscience: “Curses erupt from the more emotional, impulsive parts of our brains, more squawks than labels. A word is presented; a curse pops out” (4). When we have time to assemble a sentence, we do; if we spot a shark swimming next to us, we yell: “fuck!” Curses, the author goes on to write, are completely disconnected from their technical meaning. When yelling “fuck!” because we’ve seen a shark, we don’t mean “sexual intercourse!”
Some of the information in this book isn’t new to me, but I like the way McWhorter traces each word back to its beginning—at least as far as he is able. The author’s use of etymology is not too academic for the non-expert, linguistics-curious readers and his sense of humor about the whole subject—even while treating it seriously—comes through clearly. What’s considered profane changes all the time:
McWhorter also delves into grammar by explaining how profanity can be a pronoun, noun, etc. He has several tables scattered throughout the book showing how words like shit, ass, and nigga are used in casual, everyday language. I think my favorite chapter has to be “Profanity and Shit.” He traces the word back to its beginning, and then has this fun little diagram showing the extensions from the basic beginning of shit. [Back (body part)behindbefore (i.e. back in time) and behindback someone/something up and backcome back (i.e. backward)]. He then explains all of the extensions in detail. It’s absolutely fascinating. The chapter about ass (“A Kick-Ass Little Word”) is also really good but I’m disappointed he neglected to discuss one of my favorite uses of ass: half-ass, as in “Well, he really half-assed that.” I know I’m not the only person who says this, but maybe the author’s never heard the expression?
Nine Nasty Words is a delicious treat if linguistics are your thing. As McWhorter says:
McWhorter first gives you an overview of curses and profanity, along with a little neuroscience: “Curses erupt from the more emotional, impulsive parts of our brains, more squawks than labels. A word is presented; a curse pops out” (4). When we have time to assemble a sentence, we do; if we spot a shark swimming next to us, we yell: “fuck!” Curses, the author goes on to write, are completely disconnected from their technical meaning. When yelling “fuck!” because we’ve seen a shark, we don’t mean “sexual intercourse!”
Some of the information in this book isn’t new to me, but I like the way McWhorter traces each word back to its beginning—at least as far as he is able. The author’s use of etymology is not too academic for the non-expert, linguistics-curious readers and his sense of humor about the whole subject—even while treating it seriously—comes through clearly. What’s considered profane changes all the time:
The fashions change, as always and everywhere, but what persists is the taboo itself, a universal of human societies. What is considered taboo itself differs from one epoch to another, but the sheer fact of taboo does not. Language cannot help but reflect something so fundamental to our social consciousness, and thus there will always be words and expressions that are shot out of the right brain rather than gift-wrapped by the left one” (6).This is a fun book to read (McWhorter is goofy and some of his attempts at humor are lame but you certainly can’t call the text dry and boring) and intellectually fun—my brain loved it. I learned that profanity has had three main eras of evolution: when the worst you could say was about religion, when the worst you could say was about the body, and when the worst you could say was about a group of people (slurs). We are right now in the last era; the word nigger is so profane right now, considered such a taboo word, that even McWhorter felt the need to explain why he wrote out the full word and why I am incredibly uncomfortable even typing the word. I’m typing it out for the same reason (well the second reason) McWhorter gave: that he should name the word he is discussing, rather than typing its euphemism (the n-word). The other word that is considered very taboo and shocking in today’s society (much more than fuck) is cunt. Remember the kerfuffle Samantha Bee caused when she used the word on her show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee to refer to Ivanka Trump? Of course, much of the shit storm was due to politics (Trump lovers having a shit) rather than the word itself, as these same complainers were perfectly okay with the (now former) president saying (and grabbing) pussy.
McWhorter also delves into grammar by explaining how profanity can be a pronoun, noun, etc. He has several tables scattered throughout the book showing how words like shit, ass, and nigga are used in casual, everyday language. I think my favorite chapter has to be “Profanity and Shit.” He traces the word back to its beginning, and then has this fun little diagram showing the extensions from the basic beginning of shit. [Back (body part)behindbefore (i.e. back in time) and behindback someone/something up and backcome back (i.e. backward)]. He then explains all of the extensions in detail. It’s absolutely fascinating. The chapter about ass (“A Kick-Ass Little Word”) is also really good but I’m disappointed he neglected to discuss one of my favorite uses of ass: half-ass, as in “Well, he really half-assed that.” I know I’m not the only person who says this, but maybe the author’s never heard the expression?
Nine Nasty Words is a delicious treat if linguistics are your thing. As McWhorter says:
Profanity will always intrigue us with its distinctive status and flavor amid the “real” words that make up our language. They are both not real words and realer than most others. What chose them to give vent to our ids? How have our curse words transformed along with our taboos? And what can these words teach us about language and linguistics in general? There’s more to profanity than discomfort, catharsis, and seduction (7).I highly recommend this book.
May 18, 2021
Linguistics are so fascinating!
This book was very interesting!
I am captivated by language and words. This book was very eye-opening about the history behind some of the famous English curse words.
This book was fun, funny, but also seriously interesting.
Very well written, and well researched.
I would recommend this book alongside A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life for some reading on language and writing.
4.1/5
This book was very interesting!
I am captivated by language and words. This book was very eye-opening about the history behind some of the famous English curse words.
This book was fun, funny, but also seriously interesting.
Very well written, and well researched.
I would recommend this book alongside A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life for some reading on language and writing.
4.1/5
June 12, 2021
A fascinating book! McWhorter dives into the history and evolution of profanity in English. It is funny but also rich in its exploration of the roots of our contemporary swear words. McWhorter also gets into the why of profanity, what role do these words play in our language and lives? And then how do these roles affect and change the words we treat as profanity. It'll change the way you think about swearing.
I listened to McWhorter read; and I think that's the best way to enjoy this book. The profanity needs to be heard, not read, in order to demonstrate its force and impact. And McWhorter is an excellent reader of his own books.
I listened to McWhorter read; and I think that's the best way to enjoy this book. The profanity needs to be heard, not read, in order to demonstrate its force and impact. And McWhorter is an excellent reader of his own books.
May 22, 2021
A very quick, very fun - and funny - book about nine nasty words, how they got their start, and how they came to be the taboo (or in some cases downgraded to just salty) terms we know today.
There was also a surprising amount of page-time devoted to old Hollywood and I was here. for. it.
There was also a surprising amount of page-time devoted to old Hollywood and I was here. for. it.
August 30, 2025
fuck yeah
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