Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

Written by John McWhorter

Narrated by John McWhorter

A New York Times bestseller
 
One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power--and why we love them so much.

Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech--the urgency with which we say "f&*k!" is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger.

Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every angle: historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9780593344866

John McWhorter

John McWhorter is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and is the author of The Language Hoax, The Power of Babel, and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. He writes for TIME, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, and his articles have also appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Daily Beast.

Reviews for Nine Nasty Words

[themulhern · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The etymologies are fun, and McWhorter's voice is just so affable, but I'm actually kind of sick of curse words with exhaustingly overloaded meaning. I just won't ever want to talk like that, so I will never learn to talk like that.

Most interesting etymology: "science" and "sh-t" are surprisingly closely connected, both deriving from a verb meaning something like "to cut".

I think McWhorter is so caught up in language that he loses track of the fact that some peole just like to know a few generic insults that they can call other people and that "racist" has become that thing, that all-purpose generic insult. It is a question whether it will last, though.

[steve02476 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good, not great. I love reading about words, foul words are interesting of course, but not really all that much more interesting than other common words, in the end. The chapter about the “n-word” was interesting, he uses the actual word of course.

[dokfintong · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book got great reviews and I gave it a try. Maybe I'm not in the mood but the writing style didn't grab me.

[bodagirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very engaging romp through some of English's "nastiest" words. I particularly liked the points he made to tie the words to linguistic parts of speech and that slurs are now the most profane words rather than those associated with religion or bodily functions.

McWhorter narrates his book and does a pretty good job, though some of his accent work or impressions weren't always the best.

[tuckerresearch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

McWhorter is interesting, informative, and funny. He explains these nine dirty words, and several other beside, through the course of the history of the English language. I learned some new stuff.

[tytania-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Linguist John McWhorter gives us the derivation and analysis of the usage over the years of nine nasty words. Dirty words, profane words, taboo words.

I love the exploration of how the suffix "-ass" is evolving into a mere adjective identifier. McWhorter shows this in chart form (his charts are funny): In 1830, a "big-ass man" would be a man with a big ass. Starting around 1930, a "big-ass man" would be a man who was surprisingly big. In 2300, it'll just mean a big man. Apparently the pidgin that is the official language of Papua New Guinea treats "-fella", which for them morphed into "-pela", in the same way. A big guy is a "bigpela" guy, etc.

McWhorter is my age and I also like his usage of shows like THE JEFFERSONS to illustrate points.

And for the first time I've seen in print, someone comments on that extremely annoying "young female" accent that drives me up a wall, where short -e is pronounced like a short -a. I.e. instead of "My Mom is dead," it comes out "My Mom is Dad" (I'm taking that example from a filthy old Daniel Tosh clip). Uuuuuuuugh, I hate this so much! As a linguist, though, McWhorter isn't judgy about these things.

[hcnewton · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
---

What's key is that the stock of curses is ever self-refreshing, The fashions change, as always and everywhere, but what persists is taboo itself, a universal of human societies. What is considered taboo itself differs from one epoch to another, but the sheer fact of taboo does not. Language cannot help but reflect something so fundamental to our social consciousness, and thus there will always be words and expressions that are shot out of the right brain rather than gift-wrapped by the left one.



WHAT'S NINE NASTY WORDS ABOUT?
What's Nine Nasty Words About?
McWhorter looks at nine of the "bigger" profanities in English (with some asides to discuss related words), tracing their history, evolution, varying definitions, and contemporary usage. He points out periods where they were verboten, periods where they were perfectly acceptable—and what made them profane again.

The flow of the book comes from this thesis*:

On that matter of evolution, profanity has known three main eras—when the worst you could say was about religion, when the worst you could say was about the body, and when the worst you could say was about groups of people. The accumulation of those taboos is why “just words” like h***, s***, and n***** respectively harbor such sting.


I don't know how accurate that is, but it kind of makes sense—and it works pretty well as a framework for the book, too.

* The book uses the actual words, I wimped out and elided them.

The chapter headings give you a pretty good idea of what the book covers and shows how the framework is used (with the addendum at the end):

1 D*** and H***: English’s First Bad Words
2 What Is It About F***?
3 Profanity and S***
4 A Kick-A** Little Word
5 Those Certain Parts.
6 Why Do We Call It “The N-Word"?
7 The Other F-Word
8 Being in Total Control, Honey!
9 A M************ Addendum



SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT NINE NASTY WORDS?
I largely enjoyed this book, I find the history and evolution of English fascinating—and while I try to eschew the use of profanity, I've found the development of those words very interesting—and I can appreciate a clever and inventive use of them in art.

This was a great look at those words—in particular, I enjoyed McWhorter's demonstration of how the words function as various parts of speech, as well as the varying nuances of meaning. It was a clever mix of entertainment and education.

McWhorter has a great style, too, throughout the book he sprinkles little gems like:

To understand how language changes without allowing a certain space for serendipity is to understand it not at all.


The [N-]word is indeed twenty-first-century English’s Voldemort term,

The chapters on slurs—"words about groups of people"—mixed in a bit too much contemporary social commentary for my taste, but I'm pretty sure most people won't agree.

On the whole, this was a great mix of entertainment and education, I doubt this is the definitive work on the subject (and McWhorter would likely agree), but it's a solid work and I'm glad I read it.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Linguist John McWhorter has a way of taking the complexities of language as we actually speak it and explaining it with clarity and humor. In Nine Nasty Words, he turns to profanity - damn, hell, shit, fuck, and more - and describes both how what we consider profane has shifted and why it makes perfect sense to say "I had to move my shit" or "I fired his ass" when it has nothing to do with the original meaning of the word.

I'm not prone to using profanity myself, but I find its use in the English language fascinating and inventive, and clearly Professor McWhorter agrees with me. Perhaps because of the subject matter, the author's humor and personality really comes through. If you follow McWhorter's podcast, you'll know he enjoys showtunes, and references abound in his usage examples. It's also rife with entertaining footnotes. I read the book delightedly, discovering the ways in which "swearing" has morphed over the years into what we use today. If I was going to be really nitpicky, the only thing I didn't love was that there were many examples of false etymologies, and I don't trust myself to remember, if I were to read the explanation again out in the wild, that it's not true instead of nodding along with "oh right, I remember reading that before...".

[jillrhudy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thank you to Penguin Random House for the advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

You can tell when authors are having a grand old time. John McWhorter is having as much fun writing about the linguistics and etymology of profane words in American English as Stephen Fry is having writing about mythology, and it shows.

“Nine Nasty Words” is positively playful. Not sexy, not shocking (most of the time), just playful.
Linguistics is a kind of sociology, and in tracing how people speak certain words, you get a lot of insights into shifts in culture and into timeless human nature. No one delights in this like McWhorter, as devotees of his “Lexicon Valley” podcast already know.

Where do profane words come from? How and why do they become profane? Why do they morph into acceptable use over time and go from salty to bland to ridiculous? Why does every language have them? McWhorter will cross into philosophy, sociology, psychology, history (of course), and many other social sciences to answer this question, peppering the text with generous citations from the history of written English, along with a dizzying number of references to more than a century of popular entertainment.

In middle English, McWhorter points out, references to body parts and bodily functions were no more profane than references to housewares. When you could take a s____ in a corner of the stairwell, or had no option but to f____ in a room full of family members, these things were not shocking, nor were the terms for them. Post-Renaissance, and with the rise of religion and modesty, these words evolved into profanity with the rise of privacy and hygiene, and suddenly inviting God to damn someone to hell was breathtakingly horrible and not fit for innocent ears.

Broadly, McWhorter shows us, the worst kind of profanity in English evolved from being about religion, to being about the body, to being aimed at groups of people. Using the “N-word” (and McWhorter even traces the beginnings of how it became referred to as the “n-word”) will now excuse you from polite society in a tsunami of tweets. Black English is different in the way that it reclaims the “N-word” and has shaped it possibly into a different term altogether, and McWhorter lays it all out brilliantly in concise arguments that make perfect sense.

The book ventures pretty far into the linguistic and grammatical weeds, so if “you’re not into that s__” you may want to give it a miss. Despite its subject matter, this is a scholarly book, with excellent footnotes and endnotes. For example, McWhorter draws a distinction between “I saw her a ___” and “I saw that s____” in the neutral dismissive reflexive in actual use, which delighted this reader to no end. Buy it for the language lover or grammar snob in your life.