THE ANATOMY OF SWEARING

It is the purpose of this book to...present the curious inquirer with a conspectus of what the best minds and most accomplished practitioners of the art have said and done about swearing..."" and, to bloody (there's a whole chapter on this particular word, rehabilitating and vindicating it) well show that swearing reveals imagination, inventiveness, eloquence. Back to the origins of swearwords, oaths and curses (whether Australian aboriginal or ancient Greek); on to the physiological and psychological release it affords as a purifier, pacifier; down through the ages, century by century (even Joan of Arc called the English Goddams; Shakespeare--a whole lexicon) to the four letter words which are finding their way back into dictionaries today.