OFF: Anglo Saxon attitudes

[Carl E. Anderson]

On tis 2 dec 1997 11.09 +0000 "J Strobridge" <eset08 at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK>
wrote:
> I know I speak to an expert here and I definitely respect that(!) but
> do we actually know what an Anglo Saxon obscenity was?   After all
> words like "greedy" "proud" and "kin-slayer" may not mean much to us
> today but back then the use or even the suggestion alone might have
> been enough to get you killed on the spot!

     Well, there's considerable literature on insults etc. in Old
Norse--dunno about Old English.  Though about a year ago the OE email list
tried to work out some obscenities and had trouble, since such things as
we understand them didn't begin to appear until later in English (as far
as anyone can tell).  The _words_ existed, but didn't have their current
taboo qualities ....

     Now we're _really_ getting Off Topic :)

ObTrack: "Sweet Mistress of Pain", Hawkwind

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/