A euphemism is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes to downplay. Euphemisms may be used to mask profanity or refer to topics some consider taboo such as mental or physical disability, sexual intercourse, bodily excretions, pain, violence, illness, or death in a polite way.
The Erinyes, also known as the Eumenides and commonly known in English as the Furies, are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth take vengeance on men, whosoever hath sworn a false oath". Walter Burkert suggests that they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath". They correspond to the Dirae in Roman mythology. The Roman writer Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote that they are called "Eumenides" in hell, "Furiae" on Earth, and "Dirae" in heaven. Erinyes are akin to some other Greek deities, called Poenai.
Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, involves the use of notionally offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion, as a grammatical intensifier or emphasis, or to express informality or conversational intimacy. In many formal or polite social situations, it is considered impolite, and in some religious groups it is considered a sin. Profanity includes slurs, but most profanities are not slurs, and there are many insults that do not use swear words.
A dysphemism is an expression with connotations that are derogatory either about the subject matter or to the audience. Dysphemisms contrast with neutral or euphemistic expressions. Dysphemism may be motivated by fear, distaste, hatred, contempt, or humour.
A taboo, also spelled tabu, is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, offensive, sacred, or allowed only for certain people. Such prohibitions are present in virtually all societies. Taboos may be prohibited explicitly, for example within a legal system or religion, or implicitly, for example by social norms or conventions followed by a particular culture or organization.
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning.
Circumlocution is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea. It is sometimes necessary in communication, but it can also be undesirable. It can also come in the form of roundabout speech wherein many words are used to describe something that already has a common and concise term. Most dictionaries use circumlocution to define words. Circumlocution is often used by people with aphasia and people learning a new language, where simple terms can be paraphrased to aid learning or communication. Among other usages, circumlocution can be used to construct euphemisms, innuendos, and equivocations.
Tapu is a Polynesian traditional concept denoting something holy or sacred, with "spiritual restriction" or "implied prohibition"; it involves rules and prohibitions. The English word taboo derives from this later meaning and dates from Captain James Cook's visit to Tonga in 1777.
Finnish mythology commonly refers of the folklore of Finnish paganism, of which a modern revival is practiced by a small percentage of the Finnish people. It has many shared features with Estonian and other Finnic mythologies, but also with neighbouring Baltic, Slavic and, to a lesser extent, Norse mythologies.
Bloody, as an adjective or adverb, is an expletive attributive commonly used in British English, Irish English, and Australian English; it is also present in Canadian English, Indian English, Malaysian/Singaporean English, Hawaiian English, South African English, and a number of other Commonwealth of nations. It has been used as an intensive since at least the 1670s. Considered respectable until about 1750, it was heavily tabooed during c. 1750–1920, considered equivalent to heavily obscene or profane speech. Public use continued to be seen as controversial until the 1960s, but the word has since become a comparatively mild expletive or intensifier.
Esperanto vocabulary and grammatical forms derive primarily from the Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Germanic languages. The language occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" constructed languages such as Interlingua, which borrow words en masse from their source languages with little internal derivation, and a priori conlangs such as Solresol, in which the words have no historical connection to other languages. In Esperanto, root words are borrowed and retain much of the form of their source language, whether the phonetic form or orthographic form. However, each root can then form dozens of derivations which may bear little resemblance to equivalent words in the source languages, such as registaro (government), which is derived from the Latinate root reg but has a morphology closer to German or Russian.
Baltic Finnic paganism, or BalticFinnic polytheism was the indigenous religion of the various of the Baltic Finnic peoples, specifically the Finns, Estonians, Võros, Setos, Karelians, Veps, Izhorians, Votes and Livonians, prior to Christianisation. It was a polytheistic religion, worshipping a number of different deities. The chief deity was the god of thunder and the sky, Ukko; other important deities included Jumala, Ahti, and Tapio. Jumala was a sky god; today, the word "Jumala" refers to a monotheistic God. Ahti was a god of the sea, waters and fish. Tapio was the god of the forest and hunting.
An ethnonym is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms, or endonyms.
Semantic change is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. In diachronic linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations, which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings. The study of semantic change can be seen as part of etymology, onomasiology, semasiology, and semantics.
Fuck is an English-language profanity that often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to around 1475. In modern usage, the term fuck and its derivatives are used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an interjection or an adverb. There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as compounds that incorporate it, such as motherfucker and fuck off.
The ethnonyms for the Poles (people) and Poland include endonyms and exonyms. Endonyms and most exonyms for Poles and Poland derive from the name of the West Slavic tribe of Polans (Polanie), while in some languages the exonyms for Poland to derive from the name of another tribe – the Lendians (Lędzianie).
Sinhala slang is used by speakers of the Sinhala language in Sri Lanka, as well as many other Sinhala-speaking individuals.
Taboo is a monograph based on a series of lectures by Franz Steiner, now considered to be a classic in the field of social anthropology. The volume was published posthumously, edited by Steiner's student Laura Bohannan, and the first edition, brought out in 1956, contained a preface by his mentor E. E. Evans-Pritchard. The lectures analyze one of the great problematic terms of modern ethnography, that of taboo, derived from the Polynesian word tapu, adopted by Western scholars to refer to a generic set of ritual inhibitions governing what was thought to be primitive society or the ‘savage mind’.
Word taboo, also called taboo language, language taboo or linguistic taboo is a kind of taboo that involves restricting the use of words or other parts of language due to social constraints. This may be due to a taboo on specific parts of the language itself, or due to the need to avoid a taboo topic. The taboo against naming the dead in parts of the world is an example. Taboo words are commonly avoided with euphemisms, such as the English euphemism pass away, meaning "die". It is a common source of neologisms and lexical replacement.
Swedish profanity can be divided into several categories. A substantial number of curse words in Swedish have religious origins. Euphemistic variants of the religious curses are commonly used as well. References to genitalia or bodily functions are common in the Swedish profanity vocabulary. Notably, no word for sexual intercourse is commonly used in invectives, unlike many other languages. However, calques of English fuck using knull (noun), knulla (verb) do occur; this comes across as more offensive than fuck does in English. In general, knull(a), along with genitalia slang words like kuk ('cock') and fitta ('cunt') are the most offensive single words. By contrast, most of the traditional religious profanities are not considered very offensive today; this is in line with Sweden's long-standing secularism.
