{"id":82206,"date":"2015-01-30T16:38:36","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T21:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=82206"},"modified":"2015-01-30T16:39:59","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T21:39:59","slug":"i-swear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/30\/i-swear\/","title":{"rendered":"I Swear"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"In<\/a>

In 1904, Roland D. Sawyer launched a crusade against obscenity.<\/p><\/div>\n

No one ever heard my grandmother, in all her eighty-three years, utter a bad word. I can only once remember her even raising her voice. \u201cIt\u2019s all\u00a0fouled up<\/em>!\u201d she cried then, shaking a broken TV set. She said it with such frustration and despair that it expressed at least as much as any curse word might have. In fact, besides the time I heard a four-year-old in my brother\u2019s playgroup call his sister Mary-Ellen a \u201cfuckindamnshit,\u201d it was the most shocking thing I\u2019d ever heard.<\/p>\n

Her husband, my grandfather, was considered foul-mouthed in the family; his language was a constant cause of distress to her. But in fact, he didn\u2019t use real swear words either\u2014certainly not compared to that little boy. It was usually a savage Goddammit<\/em>! Or\u00a0Hell\u2019s Bell\u2019s<\/em>!\u00a0<\/em>His worst outbursts were reserved for his weekly gin game. It was then that he\u2019d reach for the worst epithet of all: \u201cI\u2019ll be dipped.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be dipped\u201d\u2014said with a vehement emphasis on the last word that hinted at incipient violence, and with an Arkansas accent\u2014was all the scarier because we weren\u2019t sure what it meant. Sheep dip? Boiling oil? As a grown-up, I\u2019ve heard it since in the South (or in its cruder form,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ll be dipped in shit!\u201d)\u00a0but it\u2019s always a benign expression of surprise. Never does it convey the menace that my grandfather\u2019s version did.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that curse words tend to be ugly\u2014guttural, coarse, basic\u2014but then, any word can be made ugly. There just needs to be enough rage behind it, the way something innocent can be turned into a weapon.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, it works the other way, too. I’m thinking of another incident involving my grandmother, this one at the kitchen table after dinner one night. We were playing Boggle, as we often did; my grandmother excelled at word games. The little egg timer had run out of sand and it was my grandmother\u2019s turn to read aloud the list of words she had found in the jumble of letters. As usual, she had a lot: SQUARE, JAMS, TRUCE. And then she paused. \u201cI wasn\u2019t quite sure about this one. C-U-N-T. That\u2019s a word, isn\u2019t it?\u201d She looked around the table inquiringly, while several of her adult children dissolved into helpless laughter. \u201cDoes it mean something funny?\u201d she asked, looking bewildered. At length, one of my uncles explained. She went white, and stood up and walked out of the room.<\/p>\n

It was the first time I\u2019d heard that word, too. Maybe that\u2019s why I\u2019ve never found it as awful as I really should.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein <\/em>is a contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No one ever heard my grandmother, in all her eighty-three years, utter a bad word. I can only once remember her even raising her voice. \u201cIt\u2019s all\u00a0fouled up!\u201d she cried then, shaking a broken TV set. She said it with such frustration and despair that it expressed at least as much as any curse word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[16836,12303,15619,14367,687,1250,12304,2393],"class_list":["post-82206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-boggle","tag-cursing","tag-cussing","tag-families","tag-language","tag-scrabble","tag-swearing","tag-words"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNotes on Swearing: Is \u201cI\u2019ll Be Dipped\u201d Our Finest Epithet?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on her family\u2019s foul-mouthed tendencies (or lack thereof).\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/30\/i-swear\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Swear by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 30, 2015 \u2013 No one ever heard my grandmother, in all her eighty-three years, utter a bad word. 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