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I think that the period we're in right now is also a very similar watershed. What used to be quite 'powerful' swear words such as 'fuck' and shit' are now just a normal part of informal speech, that don't carry any actual taboo. We have now developed a new set of very real actually culturally taboo "curse words".

These new curse words are in fact so taboo that the most powerful of them cannot even be uttered in a context of explaining that someone else said them, and can only be referenced in an oblique manner such as 'he said the N-word' or 'they uttered a homophobic slur'

Those aren't curse words, they are slurs. Curse words are just verbal punctuation marks used for emphasis. 'Fuck' and 'shit' never carried the element of hate that slur words do.
I think the fact that you feel that way shows how much our culture has lost its taboos around its traditional curse words.

I think maybe an easier example to consider would to be to put 'fuck' and 'shit' aside (since its even harder to understand how these were ever really taboo), and instead consider the older more religiously inspired curses like 'damn it', 'blood the mary', etc.

These curses (in certain circles) were hugely taboo because in the worldview of the times, they were deeply harmful to use on a metaphysical / spiritual level. You were doing real harm in the world by exclaiming "damn it to hell!" or telling someone "go to hell!".

This is perhaps hard for us in our current culture where even even amongst people who claim to be religious, almost everyone would just view those as empty words, but I do think there's a real case to be made that our ancestors would have understood such curses in a very similar way to the way we understand and treat slurs today.

A curse word is a word used to curse somebody. Cursing, as in wishing ill upon someone, or delivering ill fate through magic. Hate is pretty much required for it to be an effective curse, I would think.
> I think that the period we're in right now is also a very similar watershed.

I think you’re right.

In the article, they mentioned that words denigrating the holy or sacred were the most offensive while in more recent times the most offensive words became words referring bodily functions, sex, etc. But now as you suggest, the most taboo words in the English language are slurs denigrating entire groups like various ethnic groups, religious groups, women and the elderly.

The elderly? I'm drawing a blank.
> What used to be quite 'powerful' swear words such as 'fuck' and shit' are now just a normal part of informal speech, that don't carry any actual taboo.

Maybe in some social circles, but in most circles I run in, saying "fuck" is still considered quite offensive.

Is it considered to be offensive though, or is it just a breach of protocol? I don't doubt that there are social circles where it's truly a noxiously offensive word, but in much much more circles, it's just improper or inappropriate to say, which is very different.
I am not aware of social circles nowadays where words like "fuck" and "shit" are worse than racial slurs. Even when racial slurs are accepted they are still usually considered stronger words than "fuck".
The interesting thing is that some of the "new" taboo words are only taboo for certain groups of people.

The N-word has been reclaimed by people of color, but remains taboo for others to say.

The F-slur is in the process of being reclaimed by gay people, but remains taboo for everyone else.

I can't think of any parallels in past English curse words -- "fuck" was taboo no matter who you were.

> The N-word has been reclaimed by people of color, but remains taboo for others to say.

The "N-word" was never reclaimed by black people, we always said it, and it always means something different than when said by a non-black person (and there was never a "hard-r" or a "soft-r," that's just a mockery of black dialects.) It's like the word "bitch." If a woman calls another woman a "bitch," she's obviously not demeaning her for being a women.

Also, the "N-word" was not a swear word for non-black people. It was a word to demean black people, who were demeaned by consensus by the majority of the population of the Anglo-American world. It was also used for any dark-skinned person that they didn't think of as fully human, as it was the prevailing slur during the US-Philippine War.

The "N-word" has become a swear word for non-black people because the consensus about black people has changed for the moment, and using it indicates a particular political position on race. It has been a perennial issue for non-black people to complain about because white people want a place in the oppression olympics, and it's really hard to find something that they've ever been officially restricted from doing.

We're on the internet, anonymously discussing swear words, you can just type out nigger.

There's still large segments of the internet not subject to hysterical brigades of thought police demanding every typed word be cross referenced with the ever-growing Manual of Self-Censorship and Conformity with Whoever Is Offended In The Loudest Manner.

Those words are "taboo" because they convey a direct "you are property or worse and I can hurt you and you can't stop me" violent threat. At the moment, at least in some parts of the world, that _violence_ is what is taboo. Maybe some people don't understand the implicit meaning, but lots of people do, especially the ones who're threatened.

That article didn't discuss class / culture, so whatever a nobel who's threatening an underling might say, "peon" or whatever, wasn't mentioned. Elsewhere someone made the distinction between 'insult' and 'slur' which I think is a good way to distinguish vulgarity/insult from threat.

Most cuss words are more taboo for women to say than men, and somewhat accepted in male company (bars, locker rooms, cigar bars, etc.) than in mixed. At least that’s how it was, and closer to how it is where I live.
Only certain people of color.
Many nigger-word-related incidents in the US are extremely funny when seen from outside. They look like the stoning sketch from The Life of Brian.
Is this uniformly true? Perhaps in parts of the internet, or perhaps amongst some social groups but not others. I live in a smaller center-right city in the south and they’re not used casually, though with more liberality than our grandparents might’ve done. Or by drunks, but drunks have always been prone to cussing.

By contrast, some of what you say is too offensive seems pretty common to me. It’s not polite, but you’re much more likely to hear someone use retard or faggot than drop an f-bomb. Maybe it’s just my social circle. I do notice people from other parts of the country are more like you say.

Fully agree. As a non-native English speaker, I always thought English doesn't have "real" curse words, and the only actual (taboo) curse words I know are so-called "n-word" and similar.

It's hard for me to explain the difference, but (as an educated and relatively eloquent person) I would really hesitate (as in, physically struggle with my throat) to curse in my language aloud in a public place. Saying them among my friends or family would be seen as between mildly offensive and absolutely unacceptable. When hearing someone curse in public, I instinctively assume they're uneducated or intoxicated.

Meanwhile, i can freely swear in English among the same people (and online, and in most situations abroad). My mother, who I have never heard curse in my language, says "shit" like it was "oh darn". I see English swear words everywhere online. They really don't feel like a taboo to me.

I would say it's totally normal for a 2nd language's swear words to have much less impact on one's psyche than one's maternal language.
The words that must not be named are and always have been informal speech in online multiplayer voice chats.
I've entertained this idea for some time, but I can't really see how they can develop into full blown general curse words. I have to consider that perhaps I'm now just part of the crowd that holds them as sacred, and that newer generations will start intelligently using them as swears and slowly grow their acceptance, but that still doesn't feel very compelling. I read this article trying to pull out any parallels to see what I might be missing, but still didn't get anything.

I think that kind of progression has actually run its course within the narrower contexts it has been able to - take back the word empowerment, etc. But breaking out into the general societal context seems impossible as long as those words still acutely hurt significant contingents of people, as most people don't want to casually engage in hurtful behavior.

Then again if America loses the election on Tuesday, perhaps society will just regress to the point where most people are just fine stoking group hatred (it's cheaper than bread or professional circuses, after all!), and "general" acceptance will happen that way. I still don't personally see myself taking part though, despite being otherwise quite enthusiastic about swearing.

John McWhorter wrote a whole book about this a few years ago
> What used to be quite 'powerful' swear words such as 'fuck' and shit' are now just a normal part of informal speech, that don't carry any actual taboo.

Those words would be socially disqualifying in many places I go, such as business meetings, most interactions with adults, most public interactions (for example, with a clerk at a store).

Those are slurs, not curse words. Nobody yells the N-word when they accidentally hit their thumb with a hammer.
Those are slurs and something just as powerful has always existed depending on the contexts of the time.
Fucking right
Don't mistake reddit popularisation of "cunt" for reality. It's certainly used heavily by some subcultures, ex and current armed forces, young men. Mostly it's braggadocio and routine use in everyday conversations is not normal no matter what redditors say. It's a version of "drop bear" trapping for unwary visitors. It's extremely unacceptable to most people and is avoided.

Coon cheese changed its name to "Cheer" despite having no context where it's origin story related to its slang use. It's Edward Coon of Philadelphia's proprietary branding.

Slang words for aboriginal females have fallen out of use and were all highly derogatory along with most other objectifying language about the aborigines. Terms like murri and mob are self-referential use.

I was shocked by use of Yid 20 years ago. I think some people in Australia had little or no context of its use in Europe. Likewise Paki which is still used, to a British person from the era of the BNP and paki-bashing this word is anathema. Jap went from a term of derision to a term with probably positive meanings, jap cars are cheap, well made and reliable.

Chink was and remains abusive since the gold rush era and racist white Australia immigration policy. A nong has nothing to do with the N word, ningnong just means a stupid person. Mong is offensive everywhere.

For context, we're both talking about Australia here, right?

What's (IMHO) uniquely Australian is the slang adoption of "cunt" for men, sometimes in a positive sense (good cunt, mad cunt), sometimes negative (dog cunt, shit cunt). But, just like the US, you absolutely cannot use it to refer to a woman unless you intend to offend.

Not mentioned is the large, laaarge youth subculture, sometimes called the ‘alt crowd’, that it’s become popular as a positive term- but honestly it’s permeated into the mainstream for sometime already as well. Calling things cunty or saying someone looks “so cunt” or “so cunty” is a term of praise and endearment in basically any situation I can think of among 3-4 separate social circles I’m in. The cutoff is pretty quick- I’d say the proportion of people who would be taken heavily aback has a sharp uptick starting around 26-28 year olds.

It’s not just Reddit, it’s tiktok and Instagram, the main, or at least two extremely, inconceivably large propagaters of youth slang and culture.

> Mong is offensive everywhere

Mong is the height of slurs - simultaneously racist and a reference to 'mongoloid', a cringeful historical term for Downs Syndrome. Hundreds of years of racial elitism distilled into a single syllable.

“Cunt” is not a particularly offensive word though. I think its a bit more taboo than bitch now, but I think its very common to use cunt/bitch/whore around women to signal a friendly/relaxed attitude.
Is this also true for French with a similar timeline, potentially explaining why Québecois - settled in the 1600s - primarily uses religious swear words?
I think the French today mostly say putain, which has mostly lost its literal sense, but my French is not very good.
Learned a new swear word from this article: "trumpery".
TIL that `false` is (was) a swear word. (I just hope the compliance checker for my source code doesn't start flagging it, as I'd hate to have to replace them all with `!true`... as that just makes the code read like flam-flam.
Had me puzzled for a moment as well. I guess its intended use is to describe a person? In German, a "false" person is a routinely dishonest person. (A little more nuanced than that, but I don't feel like writing an essay about it)
Zounds! Some of those 1600s usages still sound modern. "That flim-flam has me in a pickle" is something that could have come out of my mouth yesterday.
Why is it that the author decided to write 'f-word' twice instead of just 'fuck'?
Variety
As a Finn, I find the English swear words both tame and lacking in variety.
For those who can find it, Robert Graves's essay "Lars Porsena, Or the Future of Swearing" is worth a look. I think the collection that included it was Occupation, Writer.
The article mentions what the author calls "Melissa Mohr’s wonderful book Holy Sh*t".

That book is indeed very good. Highly recommended.

I think nowadays people lack expression skills and adding swear words is a cheap way to look edgy