A Short History Of Swearing

September, 1961

Scholars and Fossil-Fanciers, who dig Early Man, believe the first "swearing" was largely a matter of growls, hisses and roars calculated to strike fear in the ear of an enemy. As Finley Peter Dunne once put it, in the dialect of Mr. Dooley: "'Twas intinded as a compromise between runnin' away an' fightin'. Befure it was invinted they was on'y th' two ways out iv an argymint."This view is both extremely primitive and extremely modern. It takes into account the familiar busine...

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