As a child, I noticed that swearing in the media was less common in the ’50s and earlier, but more prevalent from the ’80s onward. However, when I consume modern media set in the past, like the book *Gravity’s Rainbow* (which was published in ’73 and set in the ’40s), characters use explicit language similar to today.
So, when exactly did swearing become common in America?
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> when did swearing become common in America?
Seems like we don’t know for sure, but it appears to be around 18,000 bce
You’re conflating the media with how people talk. People have been swearing for a [really long time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3RsJ35LKU).
What has changed is how comfortable people are recording it. Movies, songs, and literature used to be pretty heavily censored, both by official policies, and by societal sensibilities.
During the [Hays Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code) era, for example, it’s not like people weren’t swearing, fucking, and shooting each other, but you weren’t supposed to put it in a Hollywood movie.
For a lot of reasons, we have become more comfortable over the past century with art that is grittier, edgier, or just more realistic, and so movies talk a lot more like people today.
Before it was founded?
What happens on TV doesn’t represent real life, by the way.
Tbh I always kept it pretty PC in public but when I started driving for Uber I was really surprised how many strangers would randomly start cussing like crazy.
July 4, 1776
I would assume right about when people first crossed the land bridge into North America.
Hollywood Babylon and the Hays code are good examples demonstrating the fact Americans have always sworn, just the arbiters of morality have whitewashed our perception of our own behavior.
It’s not. I just had a heated argument with a stranger (yelling even) and not one curse word was used. Swearing is for when you run out of facts and just want to be mean.
When America lost its manners and good taste.
People have always swore in America. Always.
Media representations were not reality. People make the mistake of thinking that TV shows from the ’50s were the way people really lived, when it was really the way advertisers and network executives thought we would *like* to live at the time.
Due to censorship (Hayes Code, then the MPAA rating system that replaced that, and FCC regulations/network “standards and practices”) swearing was uncommon to hear in radio, film, or TV up until the 70s, when a series of high profile films got X-ratings from the MPAA due to language and violence–that led to them loosening up a bit on language.
In the 90s, the FCC started to loosen up on what was considered swearing and would be subject to fines for saying on TV. It became more common, but certain words and phrases are still forbidden in prime time broadcast network TV to this day.
Now, since most shows are released via streaming instead of broadcast over the air to an antenna, the FCC rules don’t really apply to them, so it’s less of an issue.
Books have never been regulated in this fashion. There used to be obscenity laws that could get books “banned,” but those have been consistently struck down since the ’50s, and you’ll see some pretty course language and frank depictions of sex in books going back to the 1920s or earlier.
Oh you said media.
I’m GenX. I grew up on the edge of the Rust Belt in a working class home (father was a UAW machinist, both paps were maintenance supervisors, one at a factory the other at a school district. All were Navy/Marine vets.
It was not a complete sentence without swearing.
Media – I seem to remember early 90s was when mainstream broadcast television shows started including swearing, pushing societal boundaries with shows like NYPD Blue. I don’t think even the Morton Downy Jr Show of the late 80s had the anything even remotely like the beeping found in the late 90s/early 00s shock talk shows. Heck even Jerry Springer was relatively tame in the early 90s even if the subject matter was not.
[Jerry Springer 1992](https://youtu.be/-eTYf-gWwgo?si=KnKtsI3_OcvOqKJY) vs [Jerry Springer 1999](https://youtu.be/bd4v65LhamE?si=VDSpovn1WgOIGl6i)
It’s more common in media or public settings, but not everyone has a trash mouth these days. I rarely hear swearing from my family and friends, and on the rare occasion they do swear it’s usually a “mild” curse word.
Besides being vulgar, the constant use of swear words is wasteful. They lose their shock value, and then there is nothing left to say when you really need to be shocking.
LOL we’ve been sweating a lot up here in Massachusetts. It’s always been a thing, especially in the cities (maybe the “ritzy” neighborhoods/towns they don’t as much)
You’re getting a lot of “media isn’t real, people have always cursed,” but I do think it’s much more common now than it was in the past for people to freely curse around one’s parents, children, employers, employees, in church, in the office, in “mixed company,” in the grocery store, etc.
Just like people used to dress more formally and general style is now more casual, I think the use of curse words has become much more casual too.
LOL it’s kinda cute that you think the media is an accurate portrayal of society in each era.
Swearing has been common in America since before it was called America.
No idea when it became “common” but I learned all my early swearing from my grandpa born in the 1930s and my dad born in the 50s.
I’m currently reading about the Lewis and Clark expedition from about 1804 and both Lewis and Clark have some choice words in their journals which aren’t necessarily “swearing” but pretty fucking close to it.
George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say on TV comedy bit was in the 70s, so a half century ago.
For a great history on swearing in Anglophone countries check out “What the F” by Benjamin Bergen. It dives into linguistics and the actual neuroscience of swearing.
1776?
I’m 39 and with the combination of my bachelor father and HBO it’s been pretty natural for me 😆
It started to become somewhat normalized with the advent of cable TV, which was not governed by FCC rules. Since it was subscription based, and not broadcast over the air, you could use any language you wanted. Swearing became common and it spread
Edit: That explains swearing in public.
For swearing at home, when Boomers and hippies grew up and moved out on their own, they tended to swear more at home, whereas their parents generally didn’t and wouldn’t allow it.
Some good answers here already, and I do think the internet has helped blur the line between private speech and public publication. But as a side topic, I also think we need to acknowledge a huge shift in the American profanity hierarchy. We actually have become *more* wary of slurs and anything that even resembles them, which operate as our true profanity at the top of the pyramid now.
There are different forms of profanity: blasphemy (hell, goddamn), sexual language (fuck you, motherucker), scatological (shit, piss, bullshit), anotomical (overlaps the previous two: asshole, prick, etc.), and identity-based slurs. The one a culture views as most taboo is often reflective of that culture’s values. Communities dominated by religion may take great issue at blasphemy, while others will say, “oh come on, that’s not a swear!” For a long time, the sexual language (fuck) was the most unprintable language in English, tho people said it in their real lives in various circumstances. Notice that I did not provide examples for the slurs? That’s because over the last 30-40 years or so, slurs overtook sexual language as the most taboo. This is arguably as it should be, since we view those prejudices as the most damning legacy in our society.
But I have lived through this change, and I find that young people don’t register how much of a change it is. When people call “retarded” the “r-word” but casually pepper “fuck” into every part of their internet speech, this is a notable shift since the 90s and before. (Partly because that word was not originally a slur, but that’s another issue.) If Bob Dylan used the “n-word” in a song to give voice to how people treated Hurricane Carter, it was not an incident. Now, I feel pressure not to write it even in the most thoughtful, abstract circumstances about the word itself.
So are we really less afraid of swearing? Arguably no, we simply rearranged the hierarchy. And everybody has a “don’t say Voldemort” relationship to the new top profanity.
early punk music popularized saying fuck the way we do today
I think the OP is right. I doubt we have real data as to the frequency of profanities or vulgarities before, say, WWII, but certainly in my college years it was still very common to have students who didn’t swear, and uncommon for students to swear outside of locker rooms.
Fuck you, that’s when!
(I am saying this with love in a joking way ❤️)
I don’t know, but honestly now that everything has a reference to curse words in it, it makes me want to stop swearing so much
Swearing has always been pretty common in America, but what’s considered a swear word hasn’t.
Further back a lot of swearing was mostly focused on religious blasphemy for example taking the lords name in vain, or literally cursing somebody. Basically anything exclaiming to god your unhappiness was considered bad.
Sexual terms then got lumped into the swearing category as many religious folk wanted to do away with pretty much anything sexual outside of producing children.
Today in my opinion swearing is much more focused on discriminatory language. Like derogatorily calling something gay, or retarded, and racial slurs.