You swear every day. Oh yes, you do, whether you know it or not.
You may consider yourself gentle, even genteel and thoughtful. Your morals are immaculate; your language, refined. And yet, no matter—I promise you that in the last twelve hours, you have almost certainly used a bad word. One in particular, perhaps even directed toward somebody you love.
Profanity has always lurked at the fringe of society. But when did Americans first realize it had become prevalent among their young? It may have been during a Harvard commencement ceremony, when two new graduates flabbergasted the assembly with speeches laden with vulgarity. Complaints were made to the school’s governors. The foul misbehavior was a prime topic of discussion for weeks thereafter. The general agreement was that this was the fruit of parental permissiveness.
The Harvard incident, however, was only the obtrusive tip of an enormous iceberg. Predictably, what lay beneath the surface was now of increasing concern to grown-ups. Educators proposed more effective discipline; clergymen called for a moral regeneration.
This was in New England, more than three hundred years ago. The Harvard commencement, stunned by the swearing and rivalry of two young men, was the very first Harvard commencement: 1642.
The profanity problem did not go away. Fifteen years later, one colonist protested, “I find the greatest trouble and grief about the rising generation. Young people are little stirred here, but they strengthen one another in evil by example and by counsel.” One particularly costly Indian war was believed to have been God’s punishment for “the disorder and the rudeness of young people, whereby sin and profaneness is greatly increased.” The Reverend Cotton Mather wished more adults would eavesdrop on their children at play to observe the wicked language heard among them.
What were they saying that so deeply troubled their elders? Surely many terrible things. But one was especially terrible. For while yesteryear’s obscenities and blasphemies are often unintelligible to today's ears, some manage to avoid obscurity. One not only remains in our modern dictionary, but in your everyday life. For three and a half centuries ago, it was virtually unimaginable that the solemn, beautiful farewell, “God be with you,” should be perverted and contracted into something ugly.
In each generation, there are bad words. In each generation, there are things that polite people just don't say. The offensive phrase which so perturbed our Puritan forefathers was a contraction of the phrase “God be with you” into a single word.
And that single word was goodbye.
And now you know… the rest of the story.
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