It lives up to that description: it's a great read, and regularly updated too. How have I not known about it for so long?
Here is one example: a post about whether the excessive swearing in Deadwood was historically accurate. The writer, who loved the show, notes that it had the feel of the West down pat, but the swearing was not accurate. Amusingly, she writes:
It is hard for us today to imagine the shock value of words like damn and hell a century ago. Many contemporaries of Twain censored themselves thus: d—n, dang, dam, dadburn, blank, even text-messagey acronyms like D.O.G. (danged old galoot).And further:
In an illuminating essay entitled Deadwood and the English Language, Brad Benz quotes Nunberg (again) who writes that if the characters in Deadwood had sworn in a manner authentic to the period, they’d sound like Yosemite Sam. This is surely why Milch took the decision to sacrifice historical accuracy on the altar of dramatic license in this one aspect, in order to give us a sense of the barely subdued violence and rebelliousness of the people of Deadwood. I reckoned this meant that today’s F-word was equivalent to olden days’ D-word.
In the foreword of his book The F-Word, Jesse Sheidlower writes that the word f–k wasn’t even printed in the United States until 1926 in a WWI diary. Even then, it was not used as an expletive but rather in its verbal sense, for the act of intercourse.Well, that's odd then. Certainly by World War 2, at least amongst the British, it seems it was in common use as a swear word. (I cite Spike Milligan's autobiographies as authority for that.) I guess I would have to read the book lined above to find out how it came into common use.
The only instances of the F-word I have found from the 1860’s are in the Journals of Alfred Doten, where he uses the word in the verbal sense written in a code of his own devising. (The word appears as vcuk, not very opaque.) Doten and Twain were colleagues moving in exactly the same circles, so Twain must have known it. But Doten’s usage confirms that the F-word was NOT used as a swear word back then.
Anyway, there you go: I can object to the swearing in Deadwood not just on aesthetic grounds, but on the basis that it is historically inaccurate. Stupid writers.
6 comments:
I'd almost be inclined to agree but perhaps further research is needed. I just picked up a copy of Francis Grose's The Vulgar Tongue: Buckish Slang and Pickpocket Eloquence from our library (first edition apparently came out in 1758, predating the good Msr Alfred Doten by about century - Robert Burns directed some of his poems to Grose) and turned to the 'Fs'.
Sure enough, the word appears, and it is blanked out. (Definition: 'to copulate'). The definition is simple enough; the blanking out would indicate that the word even then was considered an expletive.
I also looked up the 'D' word, 'Damn', for good measure. Actually, it never appears, but this dubious alternative spelling/explanation appears:
DAM: A small Indian coin.... hence etymologists may, if they please, derive the common expression, I do not care a dam, i.e. I do not care half a farthing for it.
The 'if they please' seems a rather sly expression in this context but it seems noteworthy that, while the book included at least part of the 'F' word, the 'D' word was considered so terrible that it does not even appear - except in substitute!
Interesting point regarding the blanking out of the F word in an 18th century book. But is the explanation that it was known as a coarse word for a particular activity, but it would not be used as a generic expletive until centuries later.
I remember reading about its history in Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, but I haven't retained much about it.
It certainly seems from the article that it took a long time to catch on a swear word in the US, which is a bit surprising.
I see the Wikipedia article on it says that there is anecdotal evidence that it was used in the American Civil War, but it's a "citation needed" claim.
Yeah, now that I have read the link in the quote to Deadwood and the English Language, it makes the same point I did in comment 2.
I haven't seen Deadwood to be honest so I'm not sure about the specific contexts in which it's used in that show! Though as far as I'm aware, when used as an expletive it doesn't have a separate meaning so much - it's just used as an intensifier, to heighten the meaning/passion/aggression in the rest of what the speaker is saying.
Well I haven't seen Deadwood either - people at Catallaxy used to link to a clip that compiled about 10 or more minutes of solid swearing from it, so I knew it would upset my delicate sensibilities.
But what your saying is the point: it was long known as a vulgar word for sex, but its use as a general intensifier was seemingly not common until the 20th century (or late in the 19th?) From what examples of Deadwood swearing I have read or heard, it is used as an intensifier.
Here's a comment from a New York magazine article:
"Sheidlower agrees that the F-word was in use back then. But he says most of the nonsexual uses of it—as an intensifier, for example—didn’t come about until around World War I."
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/n_10191/
By the way, Google is impressive. When I search for "example of swearing in Deadwood", a link to my post of this morning comes up second!
I often find Opinion Dominion is pretty high on the list of searches I Google now if I have posted on the topic.
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