Why do sailors swear

But we've been there. Here's what you need to know. Good news for you: Being a military spouse can actually make some parts of going back to school easier. Military life is not easy, but we've got your back. From marriage to kids and parenting, we have the resources you need. Martin serves in the U. Navy and has been deployed so many times that his family has lost count But after he deployed Nya is 20 months old and loves her family's Ring Video Doorbell.

Every day, Nya knows that the Ring Spouse Relationships. My 3-year-old daughter cusses like a sailor -- or, more accurately, like a soldier. Related Topics: Parenting Family and Spouse. All rights reserved.

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Military Family Life Military life is not easy, but we've got your back. To modern ears, the word "damn" barely registers as bad language, but in the highly religious culture of 18th- and 19th-century America, "damn" packed a serious punch.

As historian Paul Gilje explained his excellent book, " To Swear Like a Sailor: Maritime Culture in America ," misusing the word "damn" could violate two different Christian taboos: 1 taking the Lord's name in vain as in "God damn you! Most sailors were raised in religious homes and fully understood that throwing around the word "damn" was sinful business, but that was also part of the appeal.

Winning acceptance into the sailors' brotherhood often meant actively rejecting the mores of mainstream society, at least while onboard the ship. In his book, Gilje quotes a repentant sailor in a New York prayer meeting:.

If "damn" was bad enough, then what was considered a truly vile example of "swearing like a sailor"? There are frustratingly few mentions of specific swear words in ship's logbooks and sailors' journals from the era, but Gilje found one fellow on a whaling ship in who described his captain as using "the worst and most profane language I have ever heard from mortal lips.

In his book, Gilje found multiple accounts of men aboard a ship nearly killing each other over being called the phrase. Captains whipped and beat men for less, and mutinies were plotted over such seemingly tame words. But as Gilje explains, there was nothing tame in those days about calling someone's mother a "bitch.

In "A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" published in , the author defines "bitch" as a "she dog or dogress" and also "the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore. To call a woman a "bitch" in the 18th and 19th century was to deem her less than human and literally bestial.

And to call a man a "son of a bitch" was an unforgivable offense considering the pedestals upon which young sailors placed their angel mothers. In fact, "son of a bitch" might have been the most potent "fighting words" in the English language, both on and off the water. To drive his point home, Gilje references the Boston Massacre , the infamous incident in which British soldiers fired on a crowd of rioting civilians in Boston in , killing five American colonists in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War.

As the angry Bostonians first clashed with the British soldiers, one boy pointed to a soldier and cried out, "This is the son of a bitch that knocked me down. To call someone a bitch in such an environment was to call them a dog in heat, to announce their sexuality to the world. And then they come back home. Stories of Jacco spurred animal rights legislation way back in 19th-century London. About half of the time, reading about crime just becomes wallpaper for what feels like a slow slide into urban entropy.

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