Holy Sh*t

Holy Sh*t Plot Summary

Introduction

Imagine standing in ancient Rome, where a politician might casually use words in public speeches that would get you fired from your job today. Or picture medieval England, where swearing "by God's bones" could be considered a far worse offense than graphic sexual language. The history of taboo language reveals surprising truths about how societies evolve, what they value, and how power operates within them. Throughout human history, the words we consider "bad" have shifted dramatically, reflecting deeper changes in religious authority, social class, and cultural values. What was once sacred became profane, and what was once acceptable became taboo. This fascinating evolution tells us more than just linguistic trivia—it reveals how societies control their members, how religious institutions exercise power, and how class distinctions are maintained through language. Whether you're a history buff curious about everyday life in past eras, a language enthusiast, or simply someone who wonders why certain words carry such emotional weight, this historical journey through the changing landscape of forbidden speech illuminates the surprising connections between our words and our worlds.

Chapter 1: Roman Foundations: When Obscenity Served Social Order (100 BCE-400 CE)

Walking through ancient Rome, you would encounter a world where public buildings were covered with graffiti, popular entertainers used the foulest language, and obscene words were heard on every street corner. This was not New York City but Rome two thousand years ago, where the concept of obscenitas guided the development of our own understanding of obscenity. The Romans had a fundamentally different sexual schema than we do today. They didn't think in terms of heterosexual or homosexual - instead, they divided people by whether they were active or passive during sex. For Roman men, being a vir (a real man) meant exercising strong self-control and dominating others through sexual penetration. What mattered was not whom a man slept with but what he did with them. A man must always be the active, penetrating partner - to be penetrated would make him soft, effeminate, less than a man. Roman obscenity also served important religious functions. The obscene could be "of ill omen," contaminating religious rites, but obscene words could also please gods like Priapus and promote fertility. Unlike in modern society, Roman obscenity wasn't always separated from religious contexts. The Shit itself could be Holy. Obscene words were thought to be magical, with the power to affect the world. If you wanted a marriage to produce children or spring to come with healthy crops, nuda verba (naked words) could help bring it about. Social context mattered tremendously in Roman society. While poets like Martial and Catullus freely used explicit language in their epigrams, the same words would never appear in epic poetry or formal oratory. The hierarchy of genres dictated appropriate language, and even Cicero, when writing to friends, would apologize before using obscene terms. This sophisticated system of linguistic decorum reveals a society that wasn't prudish about bodily functions, but was highly attuned to social propriety. The Romans gave us a model for our use of obscene words, but they viewed sexuality and obscenity quite differently than we do today. Their legacy continues to influence our understanding of taboo language, even as our concepts of what is obscene have evolved dramatically over the centuries.

Chapter 2: Biblical Prohibitions: The Power of Divine Oaths (400-1200)

As the Roman Empire gave way to Christian Europe, the nature of taboo language underwent a profound transformation. Between 400-1200 CE, the most offensive language shifted from bodily obscenities to religious oaths. The Bible, particularly the Hebrew scriptures, established a new paradigm where swearing by God's name improperly became the ultimate verbal transgression. The Bible provides the foundation for another kind of swearing - the oath. Swearing an oath means calling on God to witness that a person is telling the truth or intends to fulfill a promise. The Third Commandment—"Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain"—became the foundation for medieval attitudes toward swearing. This prohibits false oaths, which invoke God as a witness to a statement that isn't true. It also prohibits "vain" oaths, which means oaths sworn to no purpose. In the Bible, swearing is the foundational act of the Jewish and Christian faiths. The covenants that God makes with Abraham are oaths, pledged by both Abraham and God. When Abram (later renamed Abraham) is ninety-nine years old, God confirms His covenant with him. This covenant is mutual - God will make Abraham the father of many nations and give his descendants the land of Canaan, while Abraham promises to be "blameless" and agrees to circumcise the males of his household as a sign of the covenant. The Bible's approach to bodily functions and sexual matters differed markedly from Roman attitudes. While the Bible contains numerous references to excrement and sex, these were generally treated matter-of-factly rather than as taboo subjects. The Song of Solomon contains erotic poetry, while prophets like Ezekiel used scatological imagery to make their points. What mattered was not avoiding mention of bodily functions, but avoiding misuse of God's name and false swearing. As Christianity spread throughout Europe, these Biblical prohibitions merged with existing cultural practices. By the early medieval period, the most shocking language involved swearing "by God's bones" or "by Christ's wounds"—oaths that were thought to literally tear apart the divine body. The shift from Roman bodily taboos to Biblical name taboos reflected a deeper cultural transformation: from a society organized around human hierarchies and bodily integrity to one organized around divine authority and spiritual purity.

Chapter 3: Medieval Paradox: Holy Fears and Bodily Frankness (1200-1500)

In medieval England, words that we consider obscene today were not shocking or offensive. When the priest Aldred translated the Latin Bible into Old English around 950 CE, he used sard (an archaic word for "fuck") in his translation of "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Similarly, John Wyclif's 1370s English Bible translation included words like bollocks (testicles) and arse without hesitation. The naked truth is that words such as bollocks, sard, and even cunt were not obscene in the Middle Ages. Medieval people did not share our modern concept of obscenity, in which certain words possess a power in excess of their literal meaning. These words appeared everywhere from the names of common plants and animals to grammar-school textbooks, medical manuals, and literature. Instead, the most dangerous kind of language in the Middle Ages was swearing - specifically, oath swearing. Sincerely done, swearing was one of the bases of stable government and social order. Badly or frivolously done, it threatened to wreak havoc with society and even to injure God himself. When you swore "by God's bones," you were thought to literally tear apart Christ's body as it sat in heaven. Oaths were extremely important in medieval culture. In the feudal society of the Middle Ages, oaths guaranteed key political relationships between lords and vassals. From the king down, men swore interlocking oaths of fealty to set up networks of land ownership, military support, and agricultural labor. Oaths were also fundamental to the medieval legal system. Witnesses in court were required to swear they were telling the truth, and a person's guilt or innocence could sometimes be proven by an oath alone. The power of oaths in medieval society explains why "false swearing becomes one of the most commonly and vehemently denounced sins of medieval times." Even if an oath is false or sworn for sinful reasons, God looks down from heaven to witness it. Because of the bargain He made with humanity in the Bible, God has no choice but to witness these oaths that are repugnant to Him. This is why vain oath swearing was considered medieval obscenity, carrying all the power of taboo that defines obscene words today.

Chapter 4: Renaissance Transformation: Privacy and the Birth of Obscenity (1500-1700)

The Renaissance marked a pivotal transition in the history of swearing. While oaths remained important, their power began to decline due to several factors. The Protestant Reformation changed people's relationship with God, making it impossible for them to touch God's physical body through the Eucharist or by swearing. For Protestants, God's body was present only "spiritually" during Communion, not physically as Catholics believed. This theological shift weakened oaths. Medieval Catholics knew that God's body was up in heaven and could be touched with their oaths. But where is God's spiritual body? What is His spiritual body? Protestant swearing cast doubt upon the extent of oaths' ability to secure the truth. The sheer number of oaths people were required to take during this period also contributed to the cultural sense that swearing by God was becoming meaningless. At the same time, a new concept was emerging - obscenity. In the closing decades of the sixteenth century, the word "obscene" began to appear in English. John Harington, who invented the flush toilet, was one of the first to use it when defending his translation of the Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso in 1591. He made a new distinction between obscene words and the things they represent - it is worse to employ obscene words when discussing wanton topics. The rise of obscenity was tied to architectural changes that allowed for the "invention" of privacy. In the Renaissance, people started building houses with more rooms, thanks to technological innovations like the fireplace. As historian Bill Bryson puts it, "Rooms began to proliferate as wealthy householders discovered the satisfactions of having space to themselves... The idea of personal space, which seems so natural to us now, was a revelation." This increased privacy created what historian Norbert Elias called "the invisible wall of affects" - the embarrassment and shame at the sight or mention of bodily functions that medieval people lacked. Body parts and actions that in the Middle Ages had been shown in public became "private" and invested with the great significance of taboo. Words for these things became taboo as well. By the end of the Renaissance, obscene words had begun to gain the power being lost by oaths. The balance began to swing away from the Holy and back to the Shit. This shift would accelerate dramatically in the centuries to come, completely transforming how people swore and what words they considered most offensive.

Chapter 5: Victorian Restraint: Language as Class Distinction (1700-1900)

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the complete triumph of the Shit over the Holy. Obscenities experienced tremendous growth in strength, even as they disappeared almost entirely from public discourse. Words for body parts and actions took oaths' place as the most shocking and offensive language. This was the great age of euphemism. To the Victorians, trousers were inexpressibles (1793), indescribables (1794), unmentionables (1823), and continuations (mid-nineteenth century). The word leg was considered too vulgar for polite society and was replaced by limb or lower extremity. Captain Frederick Marryat, visiting America in 1839, was shocked when a young lady was offended by his asking if she had hurt her leg after a fall. She informed him that the word limb was used instead. The civilizing process that began slowly in the Middle Ages reached its height during these years. Bodily functions that formerly were performed unashamedly in public were now done only behind closed doors, and the same functions were cloaked in language. Even the pornography of the period embraced an elevated style - John Cleland's 1749 Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) is basically a series of sexual encounters but contains not a single obscene word. The newly emerged middle class was responsible for much of this increased delicacy. As the industrial revolution, colonization, and global trade created a wealthy middle class, they sought to differentiate themselves from the lower classes through "refined" language. Obscene words were identified as morally wrong and lower class. As linguist Tony McEnery puts it, "The middle class sought an identity for themselves predicated in asserting their social and moral superiority over the working classes." This class dimension of language was explicit in Victorian grammar books. Alfred Ayres wrote in 1896 that people who use bad grammar "interlard their conversation with big oaths" and wear "a profusion of cheap finery." George Perkins Marsh declared that "purity of speech, like personal cleanliness, is allied with purity of thought and rectitude of action." Despite this public prudery, obscene words didn't disappear - they just went underground, gaining power from their forbidden status. By the end of the Victorian era, obscene words had completely replaced oaths as the most powerful and taboo language in English, a transformation that would be completed in the modern era.

Chapter 6: Modern Liberation: From Sexual Taboos to Racial Sensitivity (1900-Present)

The twentieth century witnessed the final triumph of obscenity over religious oaths in the realm of swearing. Words like fuck, shit, and cunt became the most offensive terms in English, while religious expressions like damn and hell lost much of their power to shock. This shift reflected broader social changes - declining religious observance, increasing secularization, and the sexual revolution. World Wars I and II played a pivotal role in this linguistic revolution. Soldiers facing the horrors of trench warfare and aerial bombardment developed a vocabulary to match their experiences, with "fuck" becoming so common in military speech that, according to linguists John Brophy and Eric Partridge, it "became a warning that a noun is coming." When these soldiers returned home, they brought their language with them. By the mid-twentieth century, obscene words began to be used nonliterally, purely for their emotional charge. When someone exclaims "Fuck!" after hitting their thumb with a hammer, they aren't referring to sexual intercourse. This nonliteral usage completed the transformation of obscenities into true swearwords - words used primarily for their emotional impact rather than their literal meaning. The democratization of obscenity accelerated dramatically after the 1960s. Legal battles over censorship, such as the famous 1960 trial of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, gradually broke down barriers to the public use of formerly taboo words. The counterculture embraced obscenity as a form of rebellion against establishment values, while feminist and gay rights movements reclaimed words like bitch and queer that had been used against them. Perhaps the most significant shift in modern taboo language has been the rise of racial and ethnic slurs to the status of our most forbidden words. While terms like "nigger" had existed since the colonial era, it was only in the mid-twentieth century that such words became universally recognized as deeply offensive. During the production of Gone with the Wind in 1939, producer David Selznick initially planned to include the word in the film to maintain "southern authenticity," but changed course only after African American actors refused to say it and hundreds of protest letters arrived. Today's linguistic landscape reflects these complex historical developments. Sexual obscenities have lost much of their shock value through overexposure in media, while racial slurs have become our most taboo expressions, reflecting evolving social values around equality and respect. The democratization of taboo language continues to evolve, with each generation redefining which words carry power and which have lost their sting.

Summary

Throughout Western history, taboo language has undergone a remarkable evolution that reflects deeper cultural transformations. We've witnessed a clear pattern: what was once sacred became profane, and what was once acceptable became forbidden. In ancient Rome, bodily language was regulated by social context rather than moral outrage. The rise of Christianity shifted taboos toward religious language, making oaths by God's body the most forbidden speech. As religious authority gradually declined, bodily taboos strengthened, reaching their peak in the Victorian era when even the word "leg" became improper in polite company. The modern era has seen both the liberation of sexual language and the rise of new taboos around racial and ethnic slurs. This linguistic journey reveals how societies use language to establish and maintain power. Whether through religious authorities controlling oaths, the middle class distinguishing itself through "refined" speech, or modern communities rejecting dehumanizing slurs, taboo language has always been about more than mere words. It reflects our deepest values and fears. Today, as we navigate an increasingly diverse world, understanding this history offers valuable perspective. Rather than simply condemning or celebrating linguistic taboos, we might recognize them as evolving social tools that both reflect and shape our collective identity. The words we consider unspeakable tell us as much about ourselves as the words we freely use.

About Author

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Melissa Mohr

Melissa Mohr is the author of HOLY SH*T: A Brief History of Swearing (Oxford University Press, 2013) which appeared on The Guardian UK’s bestseller list and has been translated into Turkish and Korean. The book was praised as “wonderfully witty” (The Sunday Times), “intelligent and enjoyable” (The Wall Street Journal), and “surprising and delightful” (The Guardian). The Washington Post called it “one of the most absorbing and entertaining books on language I have encountered in a long time...engaging and winningly droll.” Mohr has written articles for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and Salon.com. She has been interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition and on shows on the ABC, BBC, and the CBC. She has appeared on Australian TV, and given numerous talks in the US and Britain. Mohr earned her PhD from Stanford University in Medieval and Renaissance English Literature and lives in Somerville, MA.

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