[ExI] buttload

[Anders Sandberg]

natasha at natasha.cc wrote:
> I am eating lunch, thank you. 

During dinner last night a person having to leave early gave Nick a few 
bills to pay for his share. The look of revulsion on Nick's face when he 
touched the money was impressive. And indeed, money does tend to carry a 
lot of germs. One shouldn't speak of money during dinnertime, that is 
for sure. :-)


BillK wrote:
> The problem for etymologists is that swear words were banned from most
> written publications before the 20th C. So tracing the usage and
> origin gets a bit tricky.  ;)
>   

As far as I know, this is not entirely true. There are always some words 
which are outside cultured discourse, but which set it is changes over 
time. Plenty of pre-Victorian English text is pretty... earthy. The real 
problem is that the swears we use in speech tend to be different from 
the ones we write. There is a blossoming subfield of etymology and 
linguistics studying swear words

Not that I ever have much use of such language when there are characters 
like &^$#£*&\!!!  (mind my forth)



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University