A quick question
Why do we say “swearing” to refer both to saying bad words and to taking an oath? That seems really weird to me. Any thoughts on this, readers?
I remember being especially confused by this as a child because the explanation I heard from kids on the school bus, about why they’d say “h – e – double hockey sticks” or something, was that it was a sin to swear. We could never agree on which words were really “swear words” (of course that list grew and changed between kindergarten and fifth grade), and I could never get a straight answer from them about whether it was a sin to use one of those words or if it was a sin to say, “I swear!” Perhaps it was both? (And yes, I was this pedantic, as a six-year-old.)
Naturally, the FCC doesn’t make you bleep out oaths on TV. Making a solemn pledge is a generally honorable thing to do. And I’m not quite sure whether the Bible takes a position on swearing as a sin. In any case, “to swear” in the Bible generally refers to oaths … and yet I know a bunch of religious people who are very careful not to swear, in the bad-word sense. I guess that’s one more question, for any religious readers who feel inclined to chime in on this: how do you feel about swearing, in both senses, and why?
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