June 15th, 2026
When I was a boy, oh so many years ago, the English language had a broad-spectrum vocabulary capable of expressing a huge range of thoughts. In particular, we had an excellent set of expletives capable of expressing any degree of intensity.
At the bottom end was ‘damn’. This was not to be used lightly, but when used, it did not cause shock. Not after Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” in the 1939 film, Gone With the Wind.
On the other hand, ‘shit’ was definitely something that decent people said except in extreme circumstances. I’ll never forget my freshman Latin class at Jesuit High School where the teacher challenged one of the more dapper students to decline the Latin verb ‘scio’, which means ‘I know’. Now, the proper answer is ‘scio, scis, scit, scimus, scitis, sciunt -a, -um”. Of course, we were learning church Latin, in which ‘sc’ is pronounced like ‘sh’. This caused our student colleague to intone “shio, shis…” and then he stopped. “Well, what’s the third person singular?” the father demanded. After a pause, the student continued meekly: “shit, shimus, shitus, shiunt, -a, -um.”
But ‘fuck’ was just plain out of bounds. There was no circumstance in which that word was permissible. A few years later on I heard some of the coarser students in college use that word, but most of us considered such behavior worse that gauche. One could use ‘fuck’ only for the most extreme imprecations, situations demanding the strongest possible language.
It was good to have these three words at hand. One could use ‘damn’ to express minor displeasure, such as stubbing your toe whilst walking to the toilet at night. For more serious cases, such as cutting your finger with a knife, ‘shit’ was available and, as these things go, acceptable. But ‘fuck’ had to be reserved for truly serious mishaps, the kind of situation involving an injury requiring some treatment, or a disastrous turn of events.
Here’s a graph from Google Ngram showing the frequency of appearance in books of these three dirty words:
Note first that, prior to about the year 1990, while ‘damn’ did show up occasionally in books, ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ were still pretty much verboten. But then something happened. The impertinent younger generation began slinging ‘shits’ and ‘fucks’ around with no regard for their gravity. And they used them equally, with none of the taste and discernment that my generation had accorded these high-powered terms.
I am appalled and disgusted with the impudence of the younger generation. They have diluted our once-noble filthy words, the verbal inner sanctum of cursing, so that they now have all the verbal impact of ‘Oh, dear’ or ‘My, my.’ How can we now phrase our most intense expressions? Have we forever lost the power to pepper our language with cayenne, and must now settle for sweet bell pepper?