In the time of the Bible, profanity was seen as blasphemous or sacrilegious (especially in those that used the Lord’s name in vain.) Now, curse words have assimilated themselves into our lives so well that we use profane phases and words as flippantly as “and” and “you.” We as high schoolers consider those who do not  curse prudish. We find people more relatable if they too can use a curse word.

I remember in the fifth grade students would dare each other to curse, and if you backed out, you were either a baby or a chicken. However, as we grow older, we become more open  to using them(then again,back then, you couldn’t say words like “dummy” either.)

Now the question becomes why? When we have the option of using millions upon millions of other words in the English language, why those select few?

According to The Scientific American, cursing is scientifically proven to relieve stress. The study measured how long students could keep their hands in cold water. Long story short, those who swore expressed less pain than those who used “neutral words” and were able to last longer in water. According to  psychologist Timothy Jay, cursing “allows us to vent or express anger, joy, surprise, happiness – it’s like the horn of a car, you do a lot of things with that’s built in you.”

According to my own knowledge (data provided by just walking through the halls), how you talk is also very dependent on who you are with and what you feel pressured to say by peers. Furthermore,curse words have become desensitized: fifty years ago, if someone had said the f-word in the hall, it would have been scandalous; now no one would even notice.

Regardless of this, I find that we use curse words not just when we have fallen off of a bike, but just in plain old regular speech. We lose what it means to be eloquent when we make a conscious (or even subconscious) effort to include curse words into our diction. High school is a time in our lives when we are suppose to be learning how to speak and write well. But when we are f-ing around, we are affecting our ability to do that.