Pogo's argument about the c-word is highly speculative, making assumptions about things that are unknown. Cecilie1200's argument is presented using known definitions and usage of the word.
Want a road map, Newcomer? Watch this.
If you call somebody, say, "asshole" -- how is that an insult? It's an insult because you're suggesting they're an outlet of, or covered in, fecal matter. Waste material.
There's your reasoning for "asshole" being an insult.
If you call someone "moron" --- as Cecile just did to me --- it's an insult because she's disparaging my level of intelligence. Which is a bit ironic since she knows better and had admitted as much, but there you have the reason why "moron" is a insult.
Now if you call someone a "****" --- or, for that matter a "dick" -- the reason it's an insult is.............................?
See how this works? "Because you've always been told it is" is not sufficient here.
You would already have the answer, had you bothered to actually READ any of my posts, rather than just skimming the first sentence and then posting whatever it was you had already written, because you're apparently conversing with yourself.
Third time for the thinking-impaired: calling a human being a word - particularly a vulgar or crude word - for genitalia is an insult because it is intended to reduce their existence and identity as a person to basest component, particularly in a society where common decency has long held that it is crass and low-class to discuss sex and other personal acts.
Furthermore, I don't know anyone - including Sally Field - who actually applies that word to a person WITHOUT meaning it as an insult. She - and you - can argue otherwise until your faces turn blue. Don't care. Neither one of you has EVER called someone a c-t without intending it to be offensive, and intent and context are quite important in communication.
For the record, I can also assure you that if you call a woman a vagina, you're just about as likely to get slapped.
Now. Perhaps you can feel like you have accomplished something deep and scholarly and meaningful by demanding a detailed, illustrated explanation of something so painfully obvious my 3rd grader wouldn't have had to ask; I can't imagine why, but then, I'm not you.
You seem to have no clue what Circular Reasoning is, yet your every post depends on it like oxygen.
Again -- : "it is because it is" is not an answer. It's a cop-out. "It's painfully obvious" is not an answer. "Everybody knows" is not an answer. "Go try it and see what it gets you" is not an answer.
Zevia has been consumed, however reluctantly. I'm back to work. Aloha.
I have yet to say "it is because it is". That's what you HEAR, because that's what you want me to say so that you can feel like you won something. Likewise with "everybody knows" and "go try it and see what it gets you".
Oh, and "painfully obvious to a child, but not to you" wasn't intended to be an answer. It was intended as an insult FOLLOWING the answer. I'm beginning to see why this whole concept foxes you.
That's OK, I warned you there's no good answer to this. And that is indeed the whole point --- there's no good answer.
Here's last week's exploration revisited --- first the etymology of May 31:
Language has some weird workings. We say "**** you" as if it were an attack instead of a positive wish for the other party to have a good time. And we denigrate good ol' Anglo-Saxon terms just because they're not French
**** (n.)
female intercrural foramen," or, as some 18c. writers refer to it, "the monosyllable," Middle English
cunte "female genitalia," by early 14c. (in Hendyng's "Proverbs" -- ʒeve þi cunte to cunni[n]g, And crave affetir wedding), akin to Old Norse
kunta, Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, and Middle Low German
kunte, from Proto-Germanic *kunton, which is of uncertain origin. Some suggest a link with Latin
cuneus "wedge," others to PIE root *geu- "hollow place," still others to PIE root
*gwen- "woman."
The form is similar to Latin
cunnus "female pudenda" (also, vulgarly, "a woman"), which is likewise of disputed origin, perhaps literally "gash, slit," from PIE *sker- (1) "to cut," or [Watkins] literally "sheath," from PIE *kut-no-, from root *(s)keu- "to conceal, hide."
Hec vulva: a ****. Hic cunnus: idem est. [from Londesborough Illustrated Nominale, c. 1500, in "Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies," eds. Wright and Wülcker, vol. 1, 1884]
First known reference in English apparently is in a compound, Oxford street name
Gropecuntlane cited from c. 1230 (and attested through late 14c.) in "Place-Names of Oxfordshire" (Gelling & Stenton, 1953), presumably a haunt of prostitutes. Used in medical writing c. 1400, but avoided in public speech since 15c.; considered obscene since 17c.
in Middle English also
conte,
counte, and sometimes
queinte,
queynte (for this, see
Q).
Chaucer used
quaint and
queynte in "Canterbury Tales" (late 14c.), and Andrew Marvell might be punning on
quaint in "To His Coy Mistress" (1650).
"What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone? Is it for ye wolde haue my
queynte allone?" [Wife of Bath's Tale]
--- It's also related to the word "
Queen" (see "Gwen" above). And next time you meet someone named "Gwen" you've got a conversation starter. Or she does.
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And on the development, from the same thread:
After reviewing 160 plus of the comments can someone tell me where this "evil" word Ka Un TT came from ?
Good ol' Anglo-Saxon Englisshe. I did a whole thing on it backthread.
Once William the Conqueror conquered England with his William, the language of those with power was Norman French while the commoners kept the Olde Englisshe. Over time a shitload of French words merged with already existing Old English ones that meant the same thing in a way that the original Anglo-Saxon terms, the language of the real people, became the despised or so-called "obscene" ones, which is why we now say urine in 'polite' company (the French term) instead of 'piss' (the Anglo-Saxon meaning the same thing). Exactly the same meanings,
separated only by classism.
Anglo-Saxon words were the straight-ahead, no bullshit, down-to-earth terms where the French ones became (in England, not France) the more lofty, indirect, pretentious synonyms for "formal" use. So where Old English would
ask, the French would
inquire. And of course the basic biological functions were the most widely separated -- where French used
copulate or
intercourse, Old English simply and directly said
**** without beating around the bush.
That's the hole '****' went down. No logical reason other than that a lot of people mutually agreed to be offended by it. In other words it's a highly concentrated PC pill.
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So there ya have it. Anglo-Saxon words tended to be associated with the "lower" classes especially when a French one was available for circumlocution. That's all I've come up with for any reasoning on why "****" should have degraded, i.e. classism. Nothing having to do with definitions or what it sounds like; simple habitual classist associations. The same reason "polite" speech calls for the French
urine and abhors the Anglo-Saxon
piss --- even though they both mean exactly the same thing.