Swearing can be so satisfying that it can help us withstand pain. As the linguists Keith Allan and Kate Burridge put it, the harmfulness of taboos “contaminates” certain words that refer to them, making those related words taboo, too. In prudish Victorian Britain, extremely lewd street names that had existed unproblematically throughout the country in the Middle Ages were bowdlerized. And in increasingly secular cultures the taboo around religious-themed words has waned. Consider, as Professors Allan and Burridge do, spilling salt, which was once both expensive and spiritually significant.

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Persons: What’s, Keith Allan, Kate Burridge, ” Rhett Butler’s, Allan, Burridge Locations: Britain