"A pioneering work."--Steven Smith, University of Essex

This is not your typical guide to English! Stand back frightened administrators and shy teachers-Dirty Words will guide foreign language students through the dangerous territory of everyday English profanity. In Dirty Words you get all the English vocabulary that you can't learn from textbooks-the rude and the crude, the American language of anger and frustration. It's all explained here, clearly and with examples and humor. The book is divided into eight chapters covering such topics as anatomy, expletives, insults, and humor. The Accidental English chapter is devoted to words with multiple meanings; often these are common, otherwise harmless words that have additional layers of profane or obscene meaning. ESL students will benefit greatly from an understanding of these words. Another chapter defines various ethnic, racial, and homosexual slurs, as well as words associated with the bathroom. The glossary contains most of the terms discussed in the book. The final chapter contains exercises that test the comprehension of the dirty words and phrases explained in the text; the answers to these exercises can be found in an appendix. Dirty jokes are scattered throughout the text. Some readers may find them funny, some may not, but they provide a vehicle for instruction that is not only engaging for the student but contextually appropriate, as humor is one of the most frequent sources and uses of profanity. Many of these jokes depend on the comprehension of multiple meanings of a word. Each joke is accompanied by an explanation and a list of relevant vocabulary words.

Swearing plays an important role in everyday language. We swear in the streets, at school, universities, at work and at home, on the means of transport, with family and friends. People have used swear words for centuries and they will continue to use them. The Anatomy of Polish Offensive Words examines offensive and vulgar language of young Poles in their everyday life including its forms, uses, manifestations and the ways in which people censor their words and sentences. The book presents a novel viewpoint on people’s psyche since we observe how society reacts to other humans so as to impose taboos by censoring Polish language. This book is the first book written in English on Polish swearing intended for the international reader (both linguists and non-linguists) who can benefit from it. It offers an intriguing look into Polish swear words, their classification in terms of offensiveness both from the perspective of quantitative and qualitative research but also from the AI (Artificial Intelligence) viewpoint. Mixed methods research, i.e., a questionnaire-based study and a corpus-based study, makes the research original. The findings deepen our understanding of swearing and its role in language.

A witty and original look at the language of love and sex, from words of seduction, to words for genitalia and the dilemma of describing 'the deed' itself. What flower takes its name from the human testicle? Is your husband rantallion? Does your wife sport a merkin? What's a wittol, and why were they once drummed out of town while sitting backwards on a horse? Is sacofricosis a crime, a disease or an hors d'oeuvre? Morton roams through centuries of etymological lore to explain the origins of the language of love and sex. It is the perfect book for language-lovers and lovers alike.

Taboo words are the subject of this text, which traces the psychic origins of dirty words to early infancy and childhood, and their place and value in life and analytic therapy. It refers to dirty words used by Rabelais, Quevado, Mozart, Voltaire, the Marquis de Sade, Joyce and Lawrence.

A lighthearted encyclopedic volume of modern sex terms features essays, anecdotes, and cultural definitions for approximately one hundred entries, in an alphabetically organized resource that includes writing excerpts by such figures as Steve Almond, Patricia Marx, and Phillip Lopate. 30,000 first printing.