The number of unread posts above the fold are terrifyingly large...stay away and pay the price, I suppose.
Have started at the bottom and shall pant and puff my way up!
Bill, I went searching for why an expletive has more commonly, come to mean a swear word and found a possible explanation in an Orwellian essay from, 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. Have c/ped the relevant paragraph in case you dont want to read the whole thing
The whole business of swearing, especially English swearing, is mysterious. Of its very nature swearing is as irrational as magic— indeed, it is a species of magic. But there is also a paradox about it, namely this: Our intention in swearing is to shock and wound, which we do by mentioning something that should be kept secret—usually something to do with the sexual functions. But the strange thing is that when a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its original meaning; that is, it loses the thing that made it into a swear word. A word becomes an oath because it means a certain thing, and, because it has become an oath, it ceases to mean that thing. For example—. The Londoners do not now use, or very seldom use, this word in its original meaning; it is on their lips from morning till night, but it is a mere expletive and means nothing. Similarly with—, which is rapidly losing its original sense. One can think of similar instances in French—for example—, which is now a quite meaningless expletive.
The exact words have been blanked out, I think. I wonder if that is how it is in the original text or if the webmaster edited it.
The link:
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/o79d/chap32.html
