What is the word for the Yiddish practice of taking a benign word, and turning it into an obscenity?"

Don't know the name of such a practice, dr. bill -- but is it particularly a Yiddish practice?

Don't many of english's naughty words also have a familiar innocuous meaning (sometimetimes with that meaning being the dominant one) or at least originated in an innocuous meaning which has by now faded into the mists of time? For example: prick, cock, hell, damn, screw, ball, come/cum, pussy, and one where the original innocuous meaning has now dropped out of use: fuck