What is the derivation of profane language in Deadwood?

April 6, 2004 7:15 PM

Paging Laguagehat! The new HBO series "Deadwood", set in the infamous old-west Dakota terrritory town, is notably profane—even moreso than other HBO shows. This has generated some press and controversy. [more inside]

Reading the TWoP forum for the show and elsewhere, I've seen many people complain that the profanity is "modern" and "jarring". Some people have objected to "cunt", for example. But I know that "cunt" is a very old word and appears in Chaucer. So, too, are many of our profanities very, very old words. And in the linked article, the show's creator defends the profanity as historically accurate.

My intuition is that while a good number of profane words are very old, profane neologisms are coined and go in and out of fashion. I don't doubt that some of our profanities are relatively recent. The claim is made that "motherfucker", for example, is only a few decades old.

But even if most of the profanities that appear in "Deadwood" are very old, I also wonder if how they are commonly used doesn't change over time, in some cases quite dramatically. In this sense, "Deadwood's" profanity may be very anachronistic.

So I wonder what the linguists have to say about this, particularly our esteemed Languagehat. But this also brings up the related problem of translation; that is to say, is it more "accurate" to reproduce the language as it was spoken in 1870s Deadwood, or to translate it into a modern vernacular with a similar emotional resonance?

posted by Ethereal Bligh to writing & language (25 comments total)

Personally, I think this belongs in MeFi, not AskMe. Having said that ... Here's what journalist Aaron Barnhart wrote about this aspect of the show.
posted by pmurray63 at 7:26 PM on April 6, 2004

I agree, pmurray, but EBligh's a Bang Baby and won't be allowed to post to the blue for a couple more days and, you know, couldn't hold it in, the cowfucker*.

*obligatory simulated old west profanity
posted by wendell at 7:34 PM on April 6, 2004

Nah, it's too trivial for MeFi, not Best of the Web in any sense. On the other hand, it's a question to which I'd like an answer. Pronto. Chop, chop.

*taps foot*

What the fucking fuck? Where is Languagehat? Where's a motherfucking linguist when you need one? I'm having a linguistic emergency. Should I dial 711?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:44 PM on April 6, 2004

(I'm not Languagehat, but he let's me ride in the sidecar of the LanguageMobile sometimes).

The Deadwood guys know very well that there's no more evidence to deny their claim "people spoke like that" than there is to support it.

However,

1. Motherfucker dates to at least the 1920s. The Historical Dictionary of American Slang (for which, caveat, I am project editor of the forthcoming two volumes, but not for the previous two, of which the second one addresed "motherfucker"), has a first cite of 1928. It, however, is a euphemistic site. Because, as has been stated repeatedly in regards to Deadwood, people simply didn't write this stuff down. (The site All Words got it wrong because, like too many people, they believe that the OED is the definitive resource on the English language; I think it is the best dictionary ever made, one of the three most important works in the English language, but it's neither perfect nor comprehensive). It is generally agreed by lexicographers, etymologists, and historians that "motherfucker" existed at the end of the 19th century, but I know of know citational evidence for this.

2. Cocksucker dates to the 1860s, according to the principal editor of the the North American unit of the OED, and so could have easily been a part of salty speech in the period covered by Deadwood.

3. You're right: cunt is about as old of an English word as there is (though don't be suckered by folk etymologies). OED has it to 1325 for sure, and possibly as early as 1230.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:45 PM on April 6, 2004

Let's = lets, you bloody impatient people.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:45 PM on April 6, 2004

Also, "euphemistic cite" not "site."
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:47 PM on April 6, 2004

I'm not suckered by any folk etymologies. I'm an afu fella from way back. Which brings to mind a question asked by a friend the other day: how many (false) folk etymologies are built around acronyms? I can think of several. (Apparently, there were no real acronyms used as common words in the English language prior to "radar" or thereabouts, IIRC.)

What folk etymology were you thinking about for "cunt"? Or were you think of the notorious "fuck" folk etymology?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:52 PM on April 6, 2004

"Deadwood's" profanity may be very anachronistic.

Maybe, but we'll never know until the language community has Deadwood scripts or transcripts to look at. One problem with this whole piss in a pisscup is that nobody seems to know anyone who consulted on the language aspects of the film. I mean, historical linguists and the like are a small community. It's like Bush's National Guard missing buddies: you'd think someone would step forward and say, "I can verify that," but nobody does. You could have any run-of-the-mill grad student or historian do the research, but then where's your vaunted accuracy and legitimacy? See what I'm saying? If they really made an effort to be accurate, then they would have hired someone everyone knows. If they didn't really make an effort to be accurate, but are only saying it to smooth feathers ruffled over the rough language, then they would hire some schmo, or nobody at all.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:59 PM on April 6, 2004

The cunt folk etymology I was thinking of is this goddess crap.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:05 PM on April 6, 2004

Maybe the issue isn't so much about whether a word had been invented back then, but whether speakers in Deadwood in 1876 would be swearing with vocabularies and usage patterns that are so similar to what you hear in Los Angeles in 2004. Didn't they have swear words back then that we have let go of? Even if "cocksucker" had been around then, did it really have the same popularity as it has today?

And I wonder if there are some words even HBO is afraid of. Really, didn't the residents of Deadwood have more colorful terms for Native Americans than just "Indians?"
posted by profwhat at 8:23 PM on April 6, 2004

Something like "Redskins", perhaps?
posted by Zonker at 8:40 PM on April 6, 2004

Ethereal: if you want to know specifically about "motherfucker", you could probably ask Jesse Sheidlower, who wrote the book on "fuck". I think he hangs out, or used to hang out, on afu. I got his email address a few years ago for a U of Chicago scavhunt item and he didn't seem to mind my completely out-of-the-blue email. So he could probably tell you about fuck.

The fine folks who publish maledicta might know about the issue too.
posted by kenko at 9:01 PM on April 6, 2004

Partridge states the term "motherfucker" arrived in England in the "earlyish 1970s" from the U.S. FWIW, probably not much.

I believe the poster is looking for common use, not necessarily first use. For which I would argue it seems anachronistic to be fucking saying motherfucking all the fucking time.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 9:34 PM on April 6, 2004

If David Milch really wanted to go for historical realism he would have had the characters cuss in Aramaic.

"[Motherfucker] has a first cite of 1928 . . . It is generally agreed by lexicographers, etymologists, and historians that "motherfucker" existed at the end of the 19th century"

Er . . So if we can only see it used in 1930, how do we get to that it was invented 40 years earlier? What other kinds of evidence could there be? Anyhow the seeming universal nature of the insult "mother-fucker" {and permutations there-of} makes me a bit skeptical that it has such a recent vintage in English.

Its not always easy to tell, but my first clue that Deadwood was a little anachronist was when Wild Bill Hickok tells the bartender that "Bitch niggaz get the trigga". But seriously folks . . .
posted by dgaicun at 9:49 PM on April 6, 2004

FWIW, the online etymology dictionary has:

cunt: "female intercrural foramen," or, as some 18c. writers refer to it, "the monosyllable," M.E. cunte "female genitalia," akin to O.N. kunta, from P.Gmc. *kunton. Some suggest a link with L. cuneus "wedge," others to PIE base *geu- "hollow place," still others to PIE *gwen-, root of queen and Gk. gyne "woman." First known reference in Eng. is said to be c.1230 Oxford or London street name Gropecuntlane, presumably a haunt of prostitutes. Avoided in public speech since 15c.; considered obscene since 17c. Du. cognate de kont means "a bottom, an arse." Du. also has attractive poetic slang ways of expressing this part, such as liefdesgrot, lit. "cave of love," and vleesroos "rose of flesh." Alternate form cunny is attested from c.1720 but is certainly much earlier and forced a change in the pronunciation of coney (q.v.), but it was good for a pun while coney was still the common word for "rabbit": "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.' " [Massinger, 1622]

Nothing on cocksucker or motherfucker though, unfortunately.
posted by Ufez Jones at 9:51 PM on April 6, 2004

Milch discussed this topic on Fresh Air a couple weeks ago.
posted by Hildago at 9:59 PM on April 6, 2004

The cunt folk etymology I was thinking of is this goddess crap.

Cuntipotent? Eek. But while we're on the topic of cunts and etymology, can anyone verify or disprove what I was told by fellow sailors when I worked on boats, which is that "contline"¹ is a euphemistic bowdlerization of "cuntline," so named for its loose resemblance (to sex-starved sailors, anyway) to female genitalia?

1. Webster 1913: "1. The space between the strands on the outside of a rope. 2. The space between the bilges of two casks stowed side by side."
posted by IshmaelGraves at 10:46 PM on April 6, 2004

Sorta funny that our most offensive word for it, cunt, probably comes from a purely descriptive root ("wedge", "hollow place" from Ufez Jones post), and our most clinical word -- vagina, is crass slang (vagina = a sheath for a sword, in latin).

A high school latin teacher pointed this out to us in class, and was forced to quickly erase the notes after some shrill screams from one of the girls in the class.
posted by malphigian at 11:54 PM on April 6, 2004

Hmm. I can find citations for "cunt" that predate anything listed here so far, by looking at its use in surnames.

Simon Sitbithecunte was listed in the Norfolk Pipe Rolls in 1167. In 1066, Godwin clawecuncte was in the Liber Wintoniensis. Gunoka Cunteles was in a Yorkshire Assize Roll in 1219. Then there is John Fillecunt from a Lancashire Assize Roll in 1246.

Other foul-mouthed surnames/nicknames from the same period include Scittebagge, Shitface, Prikehard, Clevecunt, Wydecunthe and Louestycke ("Sc" is "sh", "Loue" is "Love").

So, yes, a lot of these terms are ancient.

Source: Reaney, P. H. The Origin of English Surnames.
posted by litlnemo at 12:50 AM on April 7, 2004

Aw, I just noticed that a lot of those were cited in one of the articles Ethereal Bligh linked to above. Well, anyway, they predate the OED. And rude surnames are interesting.
posted by litlnemo at 12:54 AM on April 7, 2004

if you want to know specifically about "motherfucker", you could probably ask Jesse Sheidlower, who wrote the book on "fuck".

Jesse is indeed a great resource, and I'm happy to say he's a coworker, a colleague, the OED person I wrote about above, and the man who was project editor (the job I hold now) for the Historical Dictionary of American Slang when it was at Random House, before Oxford University Press took over the project. Much of the F-Word, which Jesse edited, comes, in fact, from HDAS.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:13 AM on April 7, 2004

So if we can only see it used in 1930, how do we get to that it was invented 40 years earlier?

Nobody said it was invented 40 years earlier. I said it is generally agreed that it existed at the end of the 19th century, which is a completely different thing.

The pattern of words which aren't offensive can be used to estimate the patterns of words which are offensive. So if the average non-offensive word has a gap between entering the spoken language and appearing in print of X years, you can bet that your average offensive word contemporary with that non-offensive word will have a longer record still. It's all estimates and averages, and nothing is certain.

Also, while words themselves may not appear in print, there are often letters or diaries in which people refer sidewise to offensive language, saying something like, (and this is a made-up example; I am not the "motherfucker" expert), "He said something unnatural about my relationship with my mother." It's a clue. Get enough of them, you've got a theory. You work with that theory until it breaks or new evidence comes along.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:24 AM on April 7, 2004

Tangential question to the whole "cunt"-"vagina" thing: it makes very little sense to me that these common, pedigreed words are descriptive/metaphorical. Why would the word for female genitalia originate from "hollow place," or any other concept, for that matter? Wouldn't naming body parts be one of the first things for a developing language to do?

Unless I'm getting the causality wrong, and female genitalia came before hollow place...
posted by Mr Bunnsy at 10:00 AM on April 7, 2004

how many (false) folk etymologies are built around acronyms?

Way too many!

I have found WordOrigins to be useful.

(I swear, if I hear that under fornication.under.consent.of.king or ship.high.in.transit
ones again someone is going to lose an eye. Oh, and that whole pluck yew crap needs to die out as well)
posted by milovoo at 11:10 AM on April 7, 2004

Sorry, the Languagehat beacon seems to be on the fritz. But I defer to Mo on this matter—he knows a great deal more about this stuff than I do. Also, it seems to me Geoff Nunberg had something on this, but I can't find it at the moment.

As for Maledicta, Reinhold Aman's been called a lot of things, but up till now "fine fellow" hasn't been one of them. (Don't sue me, Reinhold!)
posted by languagehat at 1:07 PM on April 7, 2004