The furore about J08's thread title featuring the "F" word had me thinking about how oaths and expletives must have changed over the centuries. Apparently as far back as Viking times there used to be ritual insulting "matches" called "Flyting" which although it diminished in Middle English, revived to an extent in Scotland during the Renaissance. (I'm thinking a sort of Sir Walter Scott v. Rab C Nesbitt?)
The terms "oath" and "swearing" of course have become debased and are generally only used in their original sense in formal/legal settings. How we used to giggle at school when characters in drama were urged to "Swear!" (we would mutter "bugger" or "bollocks" and snigger ) The obvious force behind swearing in medieval times was Christianity and blasphemous utterances were the obverse side of faith. It is interesting (to me anyway) that sexual swearing (now de rigueur) was uncommon and apparently does not feature in medieval writers such as Chaucer. As we have seen it is now taken seriously by some and lightly by others which would not have been the case with religious oaths in the Middle Ages.
One of the earliest insults was "horson" or "whore's son" which is pretty explicit! So it got me thinking about how in the past, people generally swore by what they feared "Hell, hellfire, damnation,", what they held most dear "God, Jesus, Zounds (God's wounds)Heavens, etc etc . Nowadays, apart from not deliberately insulting the vicar, religious oaths are not seen to be as unrepeatable as what I think are euphemistically called Anglo-Saxon expletives which refer to bodily functions, body parts, people/animals (pig, bitch etc) presumably partly because these are words not deemed "polite" and perhaps because religion is no longer a prime factorin many people's lives, sex has taken over. So, what for the future? Will we be swearing by what we hold most dear ( iPads, iPhone 5s's, Lakeland catalogues or chocolate cake) or by what we fear - Zimmer frames, care homes, Tena ladies or commodes?
Plenty of scope for censorship there !! 
. In a book called Time Spike some people had to go back to the 19th century and, when they did they had to know what expletives were the norm then, and that was one of them. D'you think that, when I retire [4 more days now] I'll spend most of my life googling things? Anyway, I'm just going to Pixel off now, because Beeny's on the telly."I know there are people worse off then me"
Police Probe Andrew Over Sex Offences
