Frog’s Knickers
Colin Burrow: How to Swear, 26 September 2013
Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing
by Melissa Mohr.
Oxford, 316 pp., £16.99, May 2013,978 0 19 974267 7 Show More
by Melissa Mohr.
Oxford, 316 pp., £16.99, May 2013,
“... Pygmalion she gives away her social origins by her choice of intensifier. When the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell said the line onstage in 1914 she tested the tolerance of London theatregoers to the limit: they paused, then laughed uproariously. A swear word became known as ‘a Pygmalion word’. ‘Swearing’ in English covers two distinct but ... ”