Carsten Becker wrote:

> different languages. In one of the recent English lessons,
> our teacher told us that "sh*t" is considered to be worse
> than "f*ck" in English.

Oh, no! Your teacher is most assuredly wrong for all English dialects
I'm aware of.

Chris Bates wrote:

> Noo.... bloody is worse than damn, but not as bad as fuck, cunt or shit.
> As for the ranking of the last three... they all seem mild to me. I've
> heard so much swearing nothing really offends me anymore, but if I had
> to rank them I'd say:
>
> fuck < shit < cunt

I'd say "damn < shit < bloody < fuck < cunt". I'm assuming (except in
the case of "cunt") that the target of the swearing is an inanimate
object and not another person, since this is usually the case.

"Damn" isn't a swear word at all, IMO, whereas anything rightward of
"fuck", inclusive, is quite unacceptable. Anything in between is
acceptable in limited contexts, i.e. when you've got a good reason to
be angry.

B. Garcia wrote:

> this word remains. My guess is the word itself is hard and just
> *sounds* vulgar

I have the same belief about "fuck". A word for sexual activity that
is so abrupt phonetically seems intuitively to go hand-in-hand with an
attitude dismissive of the other person. It's for precisely this
reason that I'm fond of the word for sex in Gzarondan, which is
pronounced [65'KlE@`] (assuming I correctly understand what [@`] is).
It's such a soft, pleasant word, which lingers on the tongue...

Carsten Becker wrote:

> And there is really a language where there are no offensive
> words? I can't believe that there are no words that are at
> least slightly offensive.

How do you define a swear word in a cross-linguistic context?

I'd say that the attributes of the prototypical swear word are:

(a) Intrinsically offensive in many contexts, in some cases all.
(b) Alternatives exist with the same meaning but without the
    intrinsic offensiveness.
(b) In most cases the word can legitimately be used to express anger
    or other strong negative emotion, especially in private.
(c) Used by children and immature people with much hilarity.

Are there any languages with no words that exhibit all four attributes
or is swearing a cultural universal?

Isaac Penzev wrote:

> It is not regional. It comes from jail slang where it denotes a passive
> homosexualist. Jail slang words became very popular in USSR after WW2.

I gotta ask what a homosexualist is. Someone who believes in homosexuals? <g>

Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> > I cannot believe you're likening 'shit' to 'fuck'. In my use and
> > experience, it's not much worse than 'stuff'. Obviously it varies in
> > intensity...
>
> Well, believe it.  They have not been bleached of emotional
> content for everyone in this world...

There is, IME, a small minority of young Australians for whom "shit"
seems to mean "stuff" without even being intrinsically derogatory -
and many more Australians, young and old, for whom this usage is most
galling.

"Shit" is what you say when your computer crashes and you lose the
entire essay you've just been writing. You can also say, "I've had to
put up with all sorts of shit today", which is not at all the same as
mere "stuff".

Adrian.