Insults, Swearing and Cultural Decline

The last thirty years in America has seen the rise (and maybe the gradual decline) of the Religious Right. The "Right" rose in response to the January 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade decision of the US Supreme Court, which permitted abortion in almost all circumstances in the first two trimesters of pregnancy, but permitted the state to regulate and even forbid it in the third pregnancy trimester. A central premise of the philosophy of the Religious Right was that we were a culture in decline. Abortion, it claimed, was just the tip of a very large iceberg threatening to sink our "Titanic" civilization. High divorce rate, drug use, rampant pornography, lower test scores, soaring crime rates--all of these factors were used by the Religious Right to illustrate this purported decline. Of course, if you "bought" the Right's thesis, you might also be sympathetic to their remedy--to proscribe abortion, get really tough on crime, and try to outlaw or at least control the proliferation of the easy availability of sex in our culture.

A similar argument has been made about American speech. That is, the supposed "decline" of American speech has mirrored the larger "decline" in culture. In many ways we can immediately recognize that permitted speech in our day is different than in previous generations. I recall in the mid-1960s that when someone said that a thing or a person "sucked," that person could be sent to the office and given demerits (if you got 10 such demerits you could be suspended). Yet, in 2006 it isn't unusual for professionals of all stripes to use the word "suck," and there is no sense that disciplinary actions are in the offing.

The thesis of this essay, however, is that the "decline" of language is actually a much more complex phenomenon than simple one-way falling off from some earlier lofty standard of perfection. As the following will show, English has often invented words that try to blunt the shocking effect of a phrase introduced years or a generation previously. I will introduce the following paired phrases of words: you guess which one of the two was introduced earlier. The rest of this and the next essay will illustrate when they emerged.

Word Pairs or Groups

1. a. Son of a Bitch. b. Son of a Gun.
2. a. Bejesus. b. Bejabbers.
3. a. Dim wit. b. Dim bulb.
4. a. Douche-bag. b. Dirt-bag.
5. a. Damnation. b. Darnation.
6. This consists of six words or phrases. The are: a. God damn!
b. Doggone. c. Darn. d. Dang. e. Damn it! f. Dammit.

Ok, which will it be for the first five? Is a or is b the earlier-appearing word in English? In each case example a. appears earlier than b. In each case, as I will now argue, b. is a "softer" expression of the same sentiment as a. Though it is hard to show precisely that the second word was introduced specifically to soften the first, the inference is strong. The sixth one is more complex, but I will argue below that the oldest is either "God damn!" or "Damn it!," with darn coming next, and then doggone, dang and dammit. Let's turn to each of these words/phrases.

Son of a Bitch!/Son of a Gun!

I always love it when a phrase that we seek to ban or downplay in our culture had its origin in the Bard. So it is with "Son of a Bitch," or, at least a family resemblance of the phrase. In King Lear (1605) we have (II.ii) "One that..are nothing but the composition of a Knave, Beggar, Coward, Pandar, and the Sonne and Heire of a Mongrel Bitch." A century later we have the phrase as it appears today: "There stands Jack Ketch, that Son of a Bitch, that owes us all a grudge" (1707). Lawrence Sterne, of Tristram Shandy fame, wrote in a 1762 letter (only published in 1965): "Phelps is a son of a Bitch for saying I was worse than when I left You for I am ten, nay 15 per Cent better." Sometimes the phrase is used in the plural (sons-of-bitches; but who goes with whom?) or is expressed as "sonofabitch," or is spelled famously in Catcher in the Rye as "sonuvabitch." You get the point, I am sure.

The phrase "son of a gun," which the OED defines as "a somewhat depreciatory term for 'man, fellow,'" originated in 1708, with the simple sentence, "You'r a Son of a Gun." From 1840 we have: "We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun Of a watchman, 'One o'clock!' bawling." Thackeray used the term in 1849, but a certain Smyth in his 1867 Sailor's Word-book gives the following elaborate explanation for its origin: "Son of a gun, an epithet conveying contempt is a slight degree, and originally applied to boys born afloat, when women were permitted to accompany their husbands to sea; one admiral declared he literally was thus cradled, under the breast of a gun-carriage." Which seems a bit of a stretch...

Since a son of a bitch is a "despicable or hateful man" while a son of a gun seems to be a much milder ephithet, you can argue that the latter is really not intended to mitigate the former. But, the least that can be said is that it provided an alternative and softer way of expressing displeasure with someone.

Bejesus and Bejabbers

Though the OED cites an 1821 reference for the latter, the Collegiate says that "bejabbers" was first used in 1890. Examining the OED references to bejabbers confirms for me that the 1890 quotation is, indeed, the first real use of bejabbers. "A head wind, be jabbers!" The Collegiate says that "bejesus" originated in 1860, even though the first OED attestation of it isn't until the early 20th century. I will stick with the Collegiate here. Bejesus originated in 1860 and bejabbers in 1891. Both of them are corruptions of "by Jesus," a sort of mild imprecation or slang intensive. Someone can scare the "bejesus" or the "bejabbers" out of you. The thesis of this essay is that bejesus originated first, with bejabbers "softening" the harshness of bejabbers.

I posited a humorous origin of the two as follows. The words are more complex than this, but hear me out.

"Bejesus (also spelled beejezus, so I guess it won't be in the Be; I mean Bee--Here is my 11/28/06 Note--I participate in the National Senior Spelling Bee. One of the Bee's rules is that no word spelled multiple ways will be used in the contest) is defined as "a mild oath; used as a noun for emphasis," as in the sentence, "scares the bejesus" out of me. The word was first attested in 1861, the year the Civil War broke out. That would have scared the bejesus out of me, too, I think. But then, I see that the preceding word is bejabbers. Its only definition is bejesus. The dictionary helpfully also tells us that it is a euphemism for Jesus. I would have thought it implicated Buddha, but I will accept the authority of the dictionary. But I note that the first attestation for bejabbers was in 1890, nearly 30 years after bejesus begraced our language.

Now I will imagine the situation where bejabbers entered American speech. It was, no doubt, in an Evangelical household. A teen-ager was talking about being frightened of something and confessed something that scared the bejesus out of him. His mother said, "I have warned you for years not to take the Lord's name in vain. I will not have you say that! Come up with something else!" So the kid shared the problem with a sympathetic adult, possibly a pastor, who suggested he say bejabbers instead of bejesus when he faced things that scared the former bejesus out of him. So, the boy complied. And, every time he said bejabbers, he REALLY meant bejesus, but since he said the magic word bejabbers his mother didn't get on his case anymore, and he was assured of temporal (if not eternal) peace.

But, the wonderful thing about Evangelicalism and other forms of religion that don't like you to swear even with mild oaths, is that everyone knows that when you say bejabbers you mean bejesus. And, not only does everyone know it, but when they hear you say bejabbers, they immediately think, in the interior depths of their pure minds, bejesus. They are sinning in their minds while being righteous in their words. Didn't bejesus, or was it Jesus, have something to say about that?

Conclusion

Let's continue this linguistic examination in the next essay.

2241