Via MindMatters as usual, a new study on the linguistics of cussing. The authors find that most cuss words lack ‘soft’ consonants and emphasize plosives.
In a following study, the authors also looked at minced oaths – which are variations of swear words deemed less offensive, for example “darn” instead of “damn”. The authors found that approximants were significantly more frequent in minced oaths than swear words. The authors propose that this introduction of approximants is part of what makes minced oaths less offensive than swear words.
I doubt it. Euphemisms are not meant to be soft. They’re meant to be offensive without triggering an official dictionary-based response by the authorities.
The study also skips an important difference. Cussing based on sex and slime is entirely separate from cursing in a religious sense. A curse is a specific prayer request to the gods, asking them to strike down or punish the offending person or object.
Sex and slime words are more articulate versions of spitting or retching to reject a toxin. This is clear in Tourette cussing, which often switches to simple spitting.
Religious curses don’t have an automatic phonetic component.
Polistra's Mill 