Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing 1st Edition

by Melissa Mohr (Author)

72 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0199742677

ISBN-10: 0199742677

Why is ISBN important?

Trade in your item
Get a $2.41
Gift Card.

Trade in
Learn More

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Share <Embed>

Buy used On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

$16.00 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

Condition: Used - Very Good

In Stock. Sold by Book Monkey, Inc., Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

22 Used from $12.48

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Buy new On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

$24.77 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

32 New from $13.35

| Fast, FREE Shipping with Amazon Prime

Turn on 1-Click ordering

More Buying Choices

32 New from $13.35 22 Used from $12.48 1 Collectible from $15.50

55 used & new from $12.48

See All Buying Options

Free%20Two-Day%20Shipping%20for%20College%20Students%20with%20Amazon%20Student

Almost everyone swears, or worries about not swearing, from the two year-old who has just discovered the power of potty mouth to the grandma who wonders why every other word she hears is obscene. Whether they express anger or exhilaration, are meant to insult or to commend, swear words perform a crucial role in language. But swearing is also a uniquely well-suited lens through which to look at history, offering a fascinating record of what people care about on the deepest levels of a culture--what's divine, what's terrifying, and what's taboo.

Holy Sh*t tells the story of two kinds of swearing--obscenities and oaths--from ancient Rome and the Bible to today. With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome--which were remarkably similar to our own--and unearths the history of religious oaths in the Middle Ages, when swearing (or not swearing) an oath was often a matter of life and death. Holy Sh*t also explains the advancement of civility and corresponding censorship of language in the 18th century, considers the rise of racial slurs after World War II, examines the physiological effects of swearing (increased heart rate and greater pain tolerance), and answers a question that preoccupies the FCC, the US Senate, and anyone who has recently overheard little kids at a playground: are we swearing more now than people did in the past?

A gem of lexicography and cultural history, Holy Sh*t is a serious exploration of obscenity--and it also just might expand your repertoire of words to choose from the next time you shut your finger in the car door.

Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

$24.77 | Fast, FREE Shipping with Amazon Prime In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Total price: $53.20

Some of these items ship sooner than the others. Show details

Buy the selected items together

This item:Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr Hardcover $24.77
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
The F-Word by Jesse Sheidlower Hardcover $11.44
Only 14 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
F**k: An Irreverent History of the F-Word by Rufus Lodge Hardcover $16.99
Temporarily out of stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Jesse Sheidlower

21

Hardcover
$11.44
Rufus Lodge

8

Hardcover
$16.99
Geoffrey Hughes

7

Paperback
$17.00
Benjamin K. Bergen

19

Hardcover
$17.73
Francis Grose

64

Hardcover
$17.95
Ruth Wajnryb

3

Hardcover

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Throughout time, as words have left FCC-monitor territory and entered everyday conversation, we've kept coming up with new ways to express our greatest, angriest, most enthusiastic exclamations. And that process is pretty fucking cool." --Atlantic Monthly

"Intelligent and enjoyable... Ms. Mohr leads us on an often ear-boggling tour of verbal depravity, through the medieval and early-modern periods (via a fascinating analysis of scatological phrasing in early Bible translations) to the Victorian era and then our own time."--Wall Street Journal

"...one of the most absorbing and entertaining books on language I have encountered in a long time" -- Washington Post

"As someone who relies on various forms of obscenity, vulgarity and profanity for roughly 75% of my written and verbal communication, I found this book fascinating and illuminating. Melissa Mohr's scholarship is rigorous, her prose trenchant and delightful; right from page one, Holy Sh*t is a motherf*cker. We are what we swear by and about, and this slim volume represents a significant and deeply enjoyable contribution to our understanding of ourselves." - Adam Mansbach, #1 New York Times bestselling author of GO THE F*CK TO SLEEP

"[Mohr's] approach positively twinkles with pleasure and amusementEL This is a cracking f****** book, and innominables to anyone who says otherwise." -- Sam Leith, The Guardian

"In Holy Sh*t, Melissa Mohr makes curses, oaths, profanities, and swear words the occasion for an entertaining and far-ranging historical journey, from the disputes over religious oaths in the Tudor period to the labored delicacies of the Victorians to our
modern debates about expletives in the media and our new-found reticence about racial and religious slurs. One-stop shopping for anyone interested in the nether reaches of the English vocabulary." -Geoff Nunberg, University of California at Berkeley, Language Commentator on NPR's Fresh Air

"Profanity-the language that offends us-tells a great deal about who we are and how we got that way. Melissa Mohr's Holy Sh*t is a fascinating investigation, both provocative and immensely informative. I found it compulsively readable." -Stephen Orgel, author of Imagining Shakespeare

"Digressions on the art of equivocation and the etymology of some of the most infamous curses are highlights of the book, but those looking for a Devil's Dictionary of bad language should look elsewhere-this is some serious sh*t." --Publishers Weekly

"Informed, enlightening and often delightfully surprising."--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Melissa Mohr holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature from Stanford. She won a Mrs. Giles Whiting Fellowship for her dissertation, Strong Language: Oaths, Obscenities, and Performative Language in Early Modern England.

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Product Details

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (April 29, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0199742677
ISBN-13: 978-0199742677
Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 1.2 x 5.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,326 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #637 in Books > Textbooks > Communication & Journalism > Communications
- #673 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Linguistics
- #1104 in Books > Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Communication

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		67%
4 star		22%
3 star		6%
2 star		1%
1 star		4%

Write a customer review

See all verified purchase reviews

Top Customer Reviews

A bleeping good looking at a fraking offensive subject

ByPAUL MCNEILon May 6, 2013

Format: Hardcover

Kaylee: Come on, admit it. It's true.
Simon: No, I won't, because it's not. I use swear-words, like anybody else.
Kaylee: Oh really? See, I never heard you. So when is it that you do all this cussin'? After I go to bed, or...
Simon: I swear... when it's appropriate
Kaylee: Simon, the whole point of swearin' is that it ain't appropriate.
(From Firefly, Ep. 4)

We often wonder where certain swear words come from, and there are quite a few etymologies out there, some of them humorous and most of them false. What we wonder about less is how swear words have even come to exist, and why we have our particular batch of naughty words, or even what was considered bad language 50, 100, or 2000 years ago. Luckily, Melissa Mohr has come to the rescue with Holy S***: A Brief History of Swearing, which takes us from Roman times, through the Bible and up through the Middle Ages and to the modern age to get to our present take on swearing in English. Along the way, we get a fascinating look at how "swearing" has historically dealt with two main types of taboos- the "holy," including God and biblical injunctions against swearing, and the "s***," or words related with feces, sex and sexual organs, and other physical taboos. We see how different eras had stronger ties to different sides of the equation, so people in Middle Ages England used references to Christ's body to swear, while some of those same people had last names that would make most people today blush and/or laugh out loud. Class and gender play a role as well, with the phrase "swearing like a lord" being a former equivalent to today's "swearing like a sailor." Along the way, we see how bathroom graffiti in Roman times was quite similar to today's, how Golden Age playwrights pushed the boundaries of government censorship, and how the two World Wars of the last century changed the way we swear today. And, of course, we discover why it's even called "swearing" today, when oath swearing is no longer considered offensive.

This book is from Oxford University Press, and takes a scholarly approach to the topic, but the subject matter keeps things from ever getting too dry. While your inner academic nods in approval, your inner 5th-grader can snicker, and your inner prude can be shocked. Make no mistake, every kind of swearing is on display, from the mild to the crude to the obscene, so those easily offended might want to avoid this one. Also, this is a historical work, so while there is some discussion of how and why such words have their power, it is not much, with the focus instead on the evolution of these words, and their sociocultural effects. It won't be your lightest read of the month, but it just might be one of the most interesting.

33 comments 29 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

A fun and engaging look into swearing throughout the ages

ByMary Con April 1, 2013

Format: Hardcover

If you like to learn cool facts and to be entertained, this is a book for you. There are so many interesting and insightful stories about vulgar language and oath swearing in this book. I've gone through life swearing and not thinking about why I swear. Now I know why we do it and I've learned a few new words along the way.

The author explains swearing trends through the ages by painting a picture of society during various eras in history. Through swearing, she retells us how they lived, reveals class systems, what they valued, believed, and feared. Not only will you learn about what comes out of someone's mouth and why, but you'll also learn about toilet practices throughout the ages (middle ages were disgusting). The Roman and Bible chapters were a fun too. There are a lot of amazing facts -- just take a look at the preview.

The book is concise and well researched. The tone is clever and approachable. It's a really fun read and you won't feel like you've wasted your time reading this. If you want to have something interesting to say about our language at the next dinner party, read this book. Or, to expand your swearing vocabulary, go to the archives of our language in this book and pick out a zinger and swear away and express yourself in a new-old way.

I'm going to recommend this for my book club. It's guaranteed to make for an entertaining discussion.

0Comment 11 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Humorous, Irreverent, and Well Written

ByD_shrinkVINE VOICEon May 27, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

We find out that, "[B]y the late nineteenth century, people were swearing in much the same manner as we do today." [p230]

But the author discusses swearing and taking of an oath from way back in ancient Roman and then brings us up to date while discussing a fair amount of neuroscience along the way. As we find out that most speech is a function of the cerebral cortex yet swearwords are a formed in the limbic system a much lower order part of the brain and is one reason why when some people suffer from dementia they may not be able to speak except for swearwords. [p5]

But some parts of the history lesson just seems gross by today's standards as when we learn of the Roman latrine called a FORICAE which was a unisex arrangement with up to a hundred seats with no dividers for people doing the same thing at the same time. [p23] That may even gross out the members of Animal House! ;--0 There is much more revealing about the Romans that the author tells us about, but I don't want to spoil all the details for you.

As we move to the middle ages in Europe we learn that "Medieval people would be much less likely to see representations of sex acts, but would be much more likely than modern ones to witness the actual performance of these acts." [p106] This was primarily due to two things, they generally slept in the nude and due to a lack of separate rooms males and females slept in the same room often with the kids and even servants of both sexes sleeping on the floor next to the bed. Hey,, somebody had to empty that chamber pot in the middle of the night.

As we quickly move up in time we are told that "[T]he lower classes swear more than the upper and middle class...[as] modern attitudes toward swearing and social class are the legacy of Victorian social climbers who were afraid to look working-class." [208]

There is an entire chapter devoted to just the F-word and it is interspersed with examples throughout the book, so if you don't want to see liberal mention of it throughout your read, this may not be the book for you. I found the book informative and worthwhile but some may see it a prurient.

0Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Five Stars

Swearing with knowledge.

Published 2 months ago by Virginia Ju

Five Stars

great gift for a friend. He loved it.

Published 3 months ago by mendolady

Five Stars

great condition, thank you!

Published 4 months ago by Amazon Customer

but my son-in-law was the gift recipient and he really liked it.

Not quite what I'd anticipated, but my son-in-law was the gift recipient and he really liked it.

Published 8 months ago by susan fournier

Can't give enough stars.

Excellent book, well written, and I have probably learned more about western history, and why western societies in different time periods thought the way they did from Dr.Read more

Published 12 months ago by Amazon Customer

I love learning new things about the English language

I've cussed since junior high of 1994. There are processes of the English language and from the ancient Greek/Roman times in this book I never knew.Read more

Published 1 year ago by Tara Dobbs

Entertaining and enlightening

I've always been a fan of micro-histories that explore language or aspects of culture. Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing was a fascinating trip through what many today think...Read more

Published 1 year ago by Archetype

Holy Sh*t is wonderfully researched and beautifully written

Holy Sh*t is wonderfully researched and beautifully written. Funny and scholarly at the same time. Read it and travel a chronological path filled with interesting side-paths of...Read more

Published 1 year ago by John D. Littlefield

Scholarly look a scatology and profanity. By the time ...

Scholarly look a scatology and profanity. By the time you finish this book, the words will have become meaningless (about the same as if you had joined the army).

Published 1 year ago by MedCrest

well written and fun

i dig it. its informative, so lots of facts, historical and contextual, but also plenty of fun for folks interested in language, how it works, where it comes from, and how it...Read more

Published 1 year ago by Rob Perez

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

Set up a giveaway