Historical Swearing

My current WIP involves rather a lot of characters who are technically ghosts and who come from a variety of eras. They're also mostly the types of people who'd swear to some degree or another (I plan on at least one being a full-blown Sir Swearsalot) and I'd like to include a fair bit of old fashioned swearwords where appropriate, partly as a nod to the fact that some of them are centuries old (the eldest is pushing five hundred), and partly in an effort to get it past the radar. Problem is that googling has so far turned up a lot of a)semi-academic articles, b)overly wordy Shakespearian insults (which have their places I admit), and/or c) Curse of The Ancients -type stuff. So I thought I'd ask here. Does anyone know any good historical swear words and/or insults and how they'd be used?

Swearing is fairly contextual, and as such what swear words would anyone use depends not only on the time they live in but also on their background, occupation, who they associate with, and so on. Heck, two neighbouring regions of the same country might very well have completely different swear words, because profanities are slang and that goes wherever it wants.

So it might help if you reveal a bit of that about those ghosts.

Okay. The location is Lancashire and most of them were working class (or lower) in life. Haven't worked out much in the way of backgrounds for all of them since there's a lot of them (eighteen and counting) and for most of them what they were in life isn't really all that important. With regards to the ones whose lives I do have some detail on, quite a few of them were either illiterate or had only a very basic education in life, at least a couple were labourers, one was something of a brawler (he's descibed as having a face that had obviously been punched several times over the course of his life and his cause of death was getting stabbed in a fight), and another was briefly a soldier. Ages at time of death range from mid-teens to forties and they're mostly male.

Well...

As I understand it, profanity is rooted in cultural taboo. So, there will almost always be swear words about urine and feces, probably vomit and snot as well. Since we're talking England here, I'd expect swear words rooted in misogyny and homophobia. Also, keep in mind that as used, most swear words are used to add emphasis, to express anger or even boredom, and to sort of build bridges between individuals. If you're asking for specific swear words, then I can't help you, but it shouldn't be difficult to make some up that are fairly plausible. Xenophobia is another source of profanity, I think.

edited 14th Mar '15 12:51:22 PM by nekomoon14

One word that sticks out in my mind is "wench," which existed in Shakespearean times and roughly translates to how we use "slut" today.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

So true. I'm pretty sure the big ones like shit ,piss, and fuck were there as were Damn and Hell. If you do try to use period correct swearwords try to have some real people read and say them out loud. If you think it sounds ridiculous hearing them say it chances are your audience will too. I remember when the show Deadwood was being written the creators wanted to use period correct swearwords but as soon as they had actual actors saying them the actors sounded too much like Yosemite Sam. Thus the creators decided to go with more "modern" swearwords instead.