MY SECRET VICE

Generally speaking, I dislike cursing. To be more accurate, I dislike the manner in which we moderns curse--there may be a certain niftiness to the versatility of certain words such that one can construct the sentence F--- the f---ing f---ers, but English is replete with a multitude of adjectives with which one can communicate a far more colorful and precise sentiment, as:

A pox upon the stenchiferous poltroons!

Wherewith one expresses that one wishes that the smelly cowards would spontaneously acquire a nasty rash. They may not actually be smelly, or cowards, and the chances that said rash will appear are slim, but the sentence is nonetheless laden with an imagery unsurpassed by the overused "f---ing f---ers."

All of which is to say, I find cursing generally lazy as it is most frequently practiced--if one wishes to complain, excessive sexual invective communicates little more than a frustration so intense as to undermine all creativity and true expression of emotion. One could communicate as much with the well-attested inarticulate-cry-of-anguish.

With that caveat, however, permit me to confess one of my dearest secret vices.

When I get my hands on a new dictionary, I look up curse words. Because I mourn and abhor the modern State of the Expletive, I find amusement and, quite frequently, the most fascinating little tidbits of history, language and even human nature in the expletives of our forefathers, such as provide relief from with the monochrome usage of the present era. Example?

According to this web site (which is by no means the final authority, but I don't have my hands on an OED at the moment, so it'll have to do), the first appearance of the F-bomb in English literature is hidden in the "scurrilous 15c. poem," Flen flyys, as follows:

Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk.

The pertinent reference is concealed beneath a simple cipher--if one replaces the individual letters comprising the gobbledegook of the dependent clause above with the preceding letter in the Middle English alphabet, the following is rendered.

Non sunt in coeli, quia fwccant wwiwys of Heli.

The subject of the poem is, apparently, a few naughty friars. Hence, translating this quote of combined Latin and Middle English, we find that the anonymous poet is warning of the eternal state of aforementioned friars.

They are not in heaven, because they f--- wives of Ely (a town near Cambridge).

Ah, the things you learn from dictionaries.