The power of a good curse
I recently heard a story about a little girl who’d express her indignation at having her hair braided every morning by mumbling incomprehensible words. Took her mother a while to figure out the kid was using half words to swear at her - saying ‘pid’ instead of stupid or ‘tard’ instead of retarded.
I don’t know any decent family where children are allowed swear words, even if the parents do use a lot of expletives. It’s called giving the kids a good education. It also leaves children feeling powerless. A young girl has to suffer all the hair pulling required to make her presentable for school. There’s no arguing about that. The only thing she can do is vent her anger in code.
Image by Michal Renčo from Pixabay
I think the primary function of using four-letter words is venting anger or frustration. It doesn’t help the situation in any way, but it does feel good calling your boss a son of bitch. When he’s not within earshot, that is. Just like the long-haired little girl, you cannot argue with the boss setting an impossible deadline so you resort to name calling. Many people would not approve of bad language on principle, but at least it’s liberating. By saying what you think out loud, the universe knows how you feel. It’s out in the open so it’s no longer festering in your heart.
It’s common for grown-ups to express shock when they hear a bunch of kids using a torrent of swear words when none of their parents is around. In the park, for instance, you may witness school-age children casually exchanging Fuck yous and much worse. One might think it’s the thrill of using forbidden words, especially those vaguely sexual. One might also say the kids are simply imitating their parents' bad manners. I think it’s more than that. It’s empowering for kids to express anger in no uncertain terms. Just like us, kids have plenty of anger issues.
When words become weapons
In Romanian, swearing at someone is called “a injura”, coming from the Latin word ‘injuriare”, closely related to injure. When you say something bad about someone you injure them somehow, you do them harm.
In English it’s even more obvious - to curse is short for putting a curse on someone. That’s quite brutal, isn’t it? Yes, we’re all educated people and we don’t believe in actually putting a curse on someone, but deep down a slightly more primitive human does. To the primitive steeped in rituals invoking supernatural forces, words have power and can do a lot of damage.
Also, people my age were brought up in a world where someone casting the evil eye on you was a real concern. You could counter that by spitting three times or making the sound of spitting. As for knocking on wood, I still do that occasionally.
One of my favorite scenes in the highly-acclaimed TV show “Rome” is when Servilia puts a curse on her former lover, Julius Caesar.
“Gods of the Junii, with this offering I ask you to summon Tyche, Megaera and Nemesis, so that they witness this curse. By the spirits of my ancestors, I curse Gaius Julius Caesar. Let his penis wither. Let his bones crack. Let him see his legions drown in their own blood. Gods of the inferno, I offer to you his limbs, his head, his mouth, his breath, his speech, his hands, his liver, his heart, his stomach. Gods of the inferno, let me see him suffer deeply, and I will rejoice and sacrifice to you.”
Since Caesar was murdered not long after, the curse worked, didn’t it?
One interesting thing I’ve noted about myself is how quick I resort to old curse phrases when I’m really angry.
A driver who won’t slow down at the curve near my building is a pretty common thing so I will express my anger with a cursory “Fuck you”. Probably a Romanian juicy equivalent, that involves sending the offending driver back to their mother’s cunt, if you’ll excuse my language. Using the language of your ancestors makes the insult more potent. However, that with the driver or random assholes you might run into is an everyday situation, which doesn’t elicit a strong response.
I will always remember 'Spartacus' for its most delightful and abundant curses :) I had this one stored on my phone, if you must know.
If I’m really angry, though, I will dig deeper in our popular wisdom, reaching for curse phrases that seem tried and tested. If they’re old, they must be more powerful. It’s also funny sometimes as you think of some old phrase that has no meaning to your modern ears.
It’s quite interesting to see how much popular wisdom lies there dormant, ready to be used as needed. In Jungian terms, that would be reaching into the cultural unconscious which stores feelings and knowledge specific to the culture you were born in. Whatever situation you find yourself in, your ancestors have been there before you and know exactly how to deal with it.
Just say these words and they’ll take care of your problem.
Different situations call for different swear words. If you’re just pissed at someone - in traffic, for instance, you might reach for something with sexual connotations. I’m sorry that most of you here don’t know my language as we’re extremely creative when it comes to fucking your opponents whole family, dead or alive, in the most bizarre ways.
Kick it up a notch and, like Servilia, one would invoke God, the Blessed Virgin or the Devil to smite or destroy your adversary. We have a high percentage of Orthodox Christians in this country, but nobody has a problem calling on the Virgin to turn an enemy to dust. I believe this is a relic of our pagan past when the gods were less squeamish about getting their hands dirty and you could rely on them to get the justice you seek.
Where do you stand on swearing and four-letter words? How do you express your anger?
Ah, good old Romanian swears. Best in the world.
Here's to hoping you don't have any incentives to call upon your ancestors, at least in the immediate future ;)
No, I don't think I'll require their services in the near future. They're old so they could use a break.
On the other hand, I was telling you about moving into the crone archetype. One side of the crone is wisdom and guidance, but the other is into witchcraft and nasty stuff. I don't feel particularly wise, but I'm good at nasty :)
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See you in my next weekly swearing counter post :p
As an Australian, swearing is just part of the vernacular. It doesnt bother me at all.
Challenge accepted :)
Only counts three words :p and only in top level posts.
Wow, it sounds like the Romanians take swearing seriously! Lol. Swearing had its time and place here in America (maybe because of our Puritan roots?) when I was a child in the 70's. It was something men did amongst themselves and people were judged and labeled as "low class" or "uneducated" if it was done in public. The famous tire-changing scene in the film The Christmas Story does a excellent job of portraying how American culture viewed swearing. It just wasn't something you did around women or if you were a child.
This all started to change in the last few decades—maybe due to films, music, and television? It's nothing to hear the F-bomb in public, even uttered by small kids. It's just not as much of a "thing" because we've been desensitized.
I swear the most in traffic. I'm getting a better handle on it now but when I was younger people probably sometimes thought I suffered from Tourettes. : )
My Mom used to say I've learned to swear while working as a journalist, in a predominantly male-dominated environment. Probably true. Also, those were educated people, some of them very smart. I don't know, but I think that people who don't use four-letter words may be bottling their anger, which is not good.
I cannot imagine that :)
I can see how that could happen in that environment. As and adult, I've learned to trust people more who don't guard their speech quite as much. People who measure each and every word are usually hiding something.
Only when driving! The drivers seat gave me temporary Tourettes. Not so much anymore though.
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Effin' and blindin' may seem pointless but there's a scientific basis for it. In tests in which subjects plunged their hands into freezing water, swearing significantly raised their pain tolerance and, it can also improve muscular strength compared with using neutral words. People gripping a hand vice were able to squeeze harder and longer if they encouraged themselves with swear words.
Didn't know that! Interesting....
So a good round of swearing somehow equals going to the gym. Now I know why I never felt the need to go to a gym :)
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I have worked in construction for decades now, and early on noticed I had acquired a foul mouth, as is common in the field. I purposed then to not let slip expletives without thought, because it was a habit that accompanied one far beyond job sites, to places where such language was highly inappropriate, such as parent/teacher conferences. As a result when things inevitably went awry on the job, as they do, I discovered that catching myself before unleashing curses caused me to discover the humorous aspects of such events, and instead of being angry that something - or a series of somethings - had gone wrong, I would wryly grin and even burst into laughter. I found this highly preferable. Being amused all the time at the efforts of the world to discomfit me actually enabled me to enjoy days I'd have been outraged, angry, and unhappy throughout before.
However, this could also be inappropriate, as angry, cursing construction workers will take a sudden outburst of laughter as a personal attack, when they're outraged at some breakage or loss, and we're all armed with blades and hammers all the time. I sought to control myself, not offend my co-workers who couldn't, so I learned to keep such reactions to myself as well.
Once, back when I still had employers, I was fixing up a very expensive beach home with a magnificent deck overlooking the ocean for a local contractor. He had hired a new laborer, unskilled but willing to bear heavy burdens lugging materials around job sites, and etc. I was high up on a ladder off this deck, which was stained a deep, dark brown, and the laborer was lugging a 5 gallon bucket of paint over to where the contractor was painting trim around doors and windows white, when the laborer tripped and spilled the white paint onto the dark brown deck. There was a moment of shocked silence, as we all processed the additional work we would have to do, and the contractor totaled up the money he would be losing, into which silence I observed 'Well, that's not good.'
Suddenly the contractor became apoplectic, screaming invective and dire imprecations - not at the laborer, or just generally - but at me. He fired me on the spot. Then I could not help myself, and I burst into laughter, barely able to see to dismount the ladder and gleefully gather up my tools to escape the utter insanity the job had become. The laborer would spend the rest of the day cleaning the deck, and the contractor would have to go buy new (expensive) paint, which meant he wouldn't get any work done, either. I was the only one making him any money! Of course, that did not improve the mood, but the more he shouted and the redder he turned, the more hilarious I found the situation and the harder I laughed. That was when I decided I would work for myself, and not anymore for contractors. Now every day is a good day, and I come home at the end of my struggles with a world determined to make me unhappy not only tired from the work, but pleased I have overcome the setbacks of the day, feeling victorious, as if I have defeated an implacable enemy.
Thanks!
You've got quite a lot of self-control. I admire that. Funny story with you getting fired. You laughing must have been quite a shock for that employer. On occasion, I sometimes manage to see the irony or the funny part of a situation, but only once I calmed down and am able to see clearly.
Also, sometimes I realize that my getting angry in a difficult situation is actually a sign of frustration. Me being angry with myself for failing at something.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote 'Anger', which he well knew as a Buddhist Monk in Vietnam during the decades of foreign aggression his people suffered. He wrote that anger is the child of fear, and I have realized that my anger at the setbacks I suffer every day working are because I am afraid I will fail. The broken boards or time wasted pulling crooked nails will put the project over budget, I'll be fired (I'm self-employed), the end of the world will come and I'll never finish... But I am very good at what I do, and I can overcome all these setbacks, and this then makes me laugh at them instead, at the childish fear of failure that would cause me to suffer, seething. I laugh at my own fear of incompetence because it is laughable after decades of professional experience, that I am still a frightened child at heart. Then I am filled with mirth and enjoy my day, as a little child should.
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