Who decided what swear words are swear words?
 

Why is "shit" a swear word but "poop" isn't?

I'm curious as to how it was derived which words were "bad" to say... and why haven't there been new words added (other than the obvious racial ones).

I mean, it's funny when Homer goes "D'oh!" but you know that if he was allowed to swear he would. If you replaced the "D'oh" with the dreaded "F word", it would still make sense... and be a little more vulgar.

So now millions of kids are going "D'oh" rather than blurting out a swear word. If they mean the same thing, why doesn't some great authority deem "D'oh" to be a swear word?

good question.....

Oh man....I hate questions like this

Gets me thinking too hard, and its not even mid day here yet :(

The words of curse..

Heh... about 6:30 am here. These are the things I wonder as I sit on the can for my early morning "sit and think"

I'm sure there are many different paths to swearword-dom

In many cases it is vocal subgroups of society who shame the rest of the population to their point of view. Christians didn't want people to say "hell", blacks didn't want people to say "nig-ger" and so on. They become the language police and try to make other people into language police.

Also, some groups choose to differentiate themselves with customs such as language usage.

It would be interesting to see a categorized list. I'd bet the largest category is sex-related terms. Sex taboos of all kinds permeate societies - as we are all too aware.