Apologies to Wragg for including him in this exercise in pseudo-philosophy.
The origin of swear words.
Picture two cavemen in the jungle...
Jollyrei: Oh, hi Wragg. What are you doing here just sitting in the forest? There’s all kinds of wild animals about.
Wragg: Yeah, I was trying to get back to the cave, but I was making some new contraption for drying skin loincloths for Barb yesterday, and accidentally kicked it with my foot.
Jollyrei: Drying skin loincloths? Why can’t they dry while she wears them?
Wragg: She’s discovered something she calls “fashion”. It means that she doesn’t wear the same loincloth every day, or even every part of the same day.
Jollyrei: Like, you mean, she has more than one loincloth? Malins the Shaman, or Sha-woman, only wears the one. It’s got beetles living in it and all. Messaline doesn’t wear one at all.
Wragg: Yeah. Weird, I know. I hit a jaguar with a rock last week, and she made a great loincloth out of its skin. She says the spots are “fashionable”. Anyway, now she washes them and then she hangs up the ones she isn’t wearing.
Jollyrei: Women, eh? You drag them back to the cave by their hair, and the next thing you know they’re making you do all kinds of things. So you bashed your foot.
Wragg: Yeah, it hurt like wherever that place is that bad people go when they die.
Jollyrei: Where’s that?
Wragg: No idea, but it would be pretty bad, right?
Jollyrei: Stands to reason, I guess. We should have a word for that place.
Wragg: Funny you should say so. I was thinking that we should have words for when things happen like you drop a log on your foot and it hurts like…well…that place.
Jollyrei: That place hurts?
Wragg: No, but if you went there after you die, because you were bad, I bet things would hurt, and it would be pretty awful. You’d want to say something to express how bad it hurt, I bet.
Jollyrei: What did you say when the log dropped on your foot?
Wragg: “Ow!”
Jollyrei: Pretty much covers it, I think. “Ow!” Good choice. Sounds like pain.
Wragg: Right. But you know, it was pretty unsatisfying. It was like, I wanted to say something really forceful, and all I had was “Ow”.
Jollyrei: What sort of forceful? What else would you say?
Wragg: Well, and don’t laugh, I just thought of what I’d rather be doing than dropping logs on my foot while building some stupid contraption for Barb, and then I thought of Barb, and then I thought of things I like doing to Barb…
Jollyrei: You thought of all that? What, like dragging her into the cave by her hair, like?
Wragg: No, AFTER the dragging, you know, when you…in her parts where you sometimes insert your hardened part that you use to leak water.
Jollyrei: That’s what you thought of? Dropping a log on my foot would probably put me right off that.
Wragg: Look, it was a really split second thought. Anyway, I shouted out “female opening between thighs where I sometimes get to put my hardened part and it feels great!”
Jollyrei: Did that help?
Wragg: Surprisingly no. But I really think I’m on to something. What we need is words for things.
Jollyrei: Strong words.
Wragg: Right.
Jollyrei: Because shouting “female opening between thighs where I sometimes get to put my hardened part and it feels great!” makes you sound like a…er…something I don’t have a word for yet, but strangely associated with those parts.
Wragg: Male or female?
Jollyrei: I’m not sure. Look we need to figure this out.
Wragg: Anyway, I was thinking, we could call both the male and female parts “genitals”.
Jollyrei: Why?
Wragg: Well, Eulalia the Wise Woman who Ties Herself to Rocks and Waits for Monsters…
Jollyrei: I always did wonder about that name. What’s wise about tying yourself to rocks?
Wragg: Pay attention, Jolly! She said, those parts were used to gen… genit… I can’t remember, but she said “genitals”.
Jollyrei: As good a word as any. So because we’d rather be joining male genitals to female genital s, rather than dropping logs on our feet, when we hurt ourselves now, we shout “genitals!”
Wragg: Um.
Jollyrei: “Female Genitals!”
Wragg: I think it’s too long. Anyway, I think we’re on the wrong track here. It’s not the genitals themselves that are important, but the action of joining them together.
Jollyrei: That is a good bit, true. I get all funny feeling just thinking about it.
Wragg: That’s powerful!!
Jollyrei: It sure is. So we shout “joining male and female genitals!”
Wragg: Um.
Jollyrei: That sounds not powerful at all. It sounds like something you tell your kid when he or she is about to get dragged into a cave by someone and have that done for the first time…
Wragg: Ah, romance.
Jollyrei: You say, yeah, he’s going to drag you into the cave by your hair, and then he will join his genitals to your genitals, or rather, that’s what we’ll say from now on, considering we just discovered the word genitals a minute ago.
Wragg: Do you always go on like this? Anyway, we need a word, a powerful word for “joining genitals”.
Jollyrei: But why would we use a word that means something fun and pleasurable to mean something painful and unpleasant.
Wragg: It doesn’t MEAN that. It’s an expression! It’s using a power word to mean whatever we want. Anyway, didn’t you ever drag a woman into your cave…
Jollyrei: It’s not my cave. It’s THE cave. We all live there. That’s how I know you joined your genitals rather noisily to Barb’s last night. I was trying to sleep after eating that almost rotting fruit, and it made my head quite pleasantly dizzy. I had a headache this morning though. Nasty.
Wragg: Don’t eat rotten fruit.
Jollyrei: No, I think I might actually look out for more rotting fruit.
Wragg: Anyway haven’t you ever dragged a woman into THE cave and just wanted to join your genitals to hers whether she wanted to or not? Like, you know, really show her whose genitals were like ready to be joined?
Jollyrei: I think I see where you’re going. A word that suggests a real assertive, my genitals are big and hard and you don’t get to say what I do.
Wragg: Yeah! That’s it! And it should be short.
Jollyrei: My genitals are not short, thank you so much!
Wragg: The word, you…male genitals! The word should be short.
Jollyrei: Why? I would have thought it should be a real corker of a word, considering what we’re talking about.
Wragg: Yeah, but think. “Female Genitals” is too long. Too many sounds. It should be like…um…ONE forceful sound! Yeah!
Jollyrei: When you joined…to Barb, she let out a sound like, “ffffff” and then when you did it again, she grunted, something like “arg”. Those aren’t words.
Wragg: No, but we can make a word. Like, ffff-arg. “FARG!”
Jollyrei: So when I drop a rock on my toe, I’m going to yell, “Farg!” It’s a bit hard to say, all those “r” and “g” sounds. I mean, before we really got into this language stuff, we generally stuck with short sounds like “og” or “ick” or “aag” or “uck”
Wragg: What about “Fuck”.
Jollyrei: Hmmmm. The “uck” is good. Very easy. Something you might say if you were in pain. You could yell it too. And the “FFF” sound makes the “uck” really stand out. “FFFuck!” Wragg, you’re onto something.
Wragg: Hey Barb, I’m going to drag you into the cave and we’re going to fuck. Yeah, that works too.
Jollyrei: Much better than “we’re going into the cave so I can put my hard male part into that part between your legs. I mean, after you’ve said all that, she’s probably not even interested anymore.
Wragg: Right. This way, all you have to do is say “let’s fuck!” and she gets all excited that it’s going to be something.
Jollyrei: Especially since she won’t know the word, considering we just made it up.
Wragg: Jollyrei, you’re a…male genitals.
Jollyrei: Why do you keep calling me that.
Wragg: Because we don’t have a word for them.
Jollyrei: Dick.
Wragg: What?
Jollyrei: Call it a “dick”. I just used a couple of different sounds than “fuck”. You use your dick to fuck.
Wragg: Okay. It's simple at least. We might need a few more words for it though. It’s pretty important.
Jollyrei: The most important part. It’s how we join to women and Eulalia the Wise Woman says it might even have something to do with how some women get all big and then one day there’s a small person.
Wragg: You can’t believe everything Eulalia says. Small people are a gift to women. They happen.
Jollyrei: What about female genitals?
Wragg: What about them?
Jollyrei: They need a word too. At least one.
Wragg: What about “twat”?
Jollyrei: How’d you come up with that?
Wragg: Look, you’re not the only one who can just string sounds together.
Jollyrei: “Twat”. Not bad. Sounds naughty.
Wragg: You’re a twat!
Jollyrei: Hey, you can’t call me that. I’m a male. I have a dick and all.
Wragg: But you feel offended. That’s interesting. If I call you a “dick” you feel sort of offended, but if I call you a “twat”, you feel really foolish too.
Jollyrei: You’re a dick, Wragg.
Wragg: Now you’re getting it! Look, if you call me that again, I’m going to bash you with a rock, right?
Jollyrei: Fuck!
Wragg: Wow, these words are great!
Jollyrei: Would we call a woman a twat?
Wragg: Good question.
Jollyrei: “Cunt” Another random choice, I grant you, but it sounds a bit softer. You could say, “I love your cunt”, or you could call a woman a “cunt” and be really offensive.
Wragg: This is complicated. Now these little words have more than one meaning. Would we say “twat” or “cunt” if we dropped a rock on our foot?
Jollyrei: No, I don’t think so. Those are “thing” words and “fuck” is an action word. Action is more forceful power.
Wragg: But if it was really good you could say “that was a good fuck”.
Jollyrei: Yeah, but you know that it still comes from the action of…er…fucking. See? Action word.
Wragg: Okay, I can live with that. Wait, what’s that sound?
Jollyrei: That growling noise? Sounds like a leopard or sabre-toothed lion or something.
Wragg: Oh, fuck!
Jollyrei: Good one. Look we need to get back to the cave.
Wragg: You’ll have to help me, since my foot is still sore. Let’s move!
Jollyrei: Uh oh. That leopard or whatever is right there on the path.
Wragg: Is it getting ready to spring on us?
Jollyrei: I think so.
Wragg: You know we could use a power word just about now, another one, since I’ve already used “fuck”.
Jollyrei: And that cunt didn’t even move when you said it. Okay, what do people do when they meet a leopard that’s about to spring and kill them and there’s no way to get out of it?
Wragg: I know one guy who said his rear opening gave way and the brown smelly stuff came out and fell on the path. He said he couldn’t control it. Look, it’s going to spring!!
Jollyrei and Wragg: SHIT!