'pon My Oath

I have recently been reading a series of books written in a very fanciful, idealized manner - somewhat in the style of Dumas - and have come to the conclusion that some new oaths are needed. By way of example, several of the characters in the story use “Blood of the Horse!” as an expression of great surprise or agitation. Now this is a wonderful phrase, but can’t really be used effectively outside the scope of the novels. So I began to speculate about what makes for good oaths.

To begin, then, it must be a common referent. It would be all well and good for me to adopt “Cracks and Shards!” from the same novels, but while others may be able to infer the depth of feeling, they wouldn’t understand the reference, so it loses efficacy as an oath.

A friend of mine once conducted an experiment in which he used “Cows” as his oath – as in “Oh cows! The server crashed again.” The purpose of the experiment was to see how long before he heard someone else use it (it was a few months). Cows are, indeed, a common referent, but as an oath, it lacked a certain something. On reflection, I decided that the something was an element of action.

Upon this realization, my first instinct was to append a suitable adjective to my friend’s oath. While “exploding cows” meets the requirements, it is far too silly to be of any practical use. This led me to modify the second requirement thusly: it cannot be just any action; there must be some momentous event that is encapsulated by the oath. Regarding the examples from the novels, “Cracks and Shards” portends a certain powerful magical sphere being broken, the effect being that the entire society would be cast into chaos. Momentous, indeed.

There is no shortage of significant events to choose from, but “by Katrina!” would quickly become dated, and also would not necessarily bring to mind the hurricane, particularly if you had a friend named Katrina, and used it in her presence.

So not only does it need to be a common referent alluding to something significant, it must also withstand the test of time – a generation at least, I would think. In this, oaths are very similar to catchphrases. “23 skidoo!” was popular in the 20s, while “Where’s the beef?” resonates with those of us of Gen X. Both were quite common in their time, but were hardly earth-shattering.

I think this is why the profane has always been fertile ground for oaths. The utterance of a profanity is, by definition, a momentous event, in that it is invoked outside of societal norms. Using a god’s name in your oath is a good way to let the listener know that you are quite serious. I am sure Plato used “By Hera’s tits!” on occasion, and if he didn’t, he should have. I think it would have spiced up the allegory of The Cave tremendously.

Elizabethan oaths included many references to God, ranging from the polite “So God mend me” to the scandalous “‘zounds”, or “God’s wounds.” Our own use of “God damn it” is in the same vein, where we want in some manner to shock the listener, in order for them to understand the depth of feeling that we are ascribing to the event that precipitated the oath.

The difficulty is that profanity is limited. According to George Carlin, there are only seven words that you can’t say on broadcast television: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits. While true when he formulated the list, it’s being winnowed down as sheer repetition blunts the edges. This doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity.

Now, I certainly have no problem with cursing. Indeed, I enjoy using words effectively, and will not hesitate to use a curse word if I feel that it is most applicable. One can always aspire to these quotes from A Christmas Story:

- “In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.”

- “My father worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium, a master.”

Alas, very few people can curse this effectively. I’ve posted elsewhere how flexible the word “fuck” can be, and I recall some trial movie where a sidebar was called to determine what, if any, word was an appropriate substitute for a defendant being characterized as an “asshole” (none was found), and I have actually parsed out the various ways of saying “shit,” such as a slow “shhhiiiiiiit” to indicate general apathy or disbelief, as opposed to a very clipped “oh shit!” when I spill hot coffee on my leg. My absolute favorite curse word is “chucklefuck,” because it’s fun to say, and an English friend of mine is fond of “fuckwit.”

Considering other cultures brings up another question on what makes good oaths: Should they be trans-national? The word “fanny” in America is considered to be okay for use in mixed company, while to the English, it is the equivalent of the word “cunt.”

I like perusing flame wars online to see what people come up with. Unfortunately, most people quickly revert to such erudite displays of nuance such as “Fuck you!” “Oh yeah? Well fuck you, too!” Cursing at people, however, while related, is different from using oaths to indicate your own level of surprise, fear, or dedication to a particular course of action or ideal. It should reflect on the speaker rather than the audience.

To that end, “Fuck me” satisfies all of the requirements, but again, it’s been worn rather thin. “On my honor” was useful when people still believed in honor to the point where they would duel over it, but now a charge of libel will result in lawsuits being drawn rather than sabers or pistols.

In David Brin’s novel Earth, natural resources are scarce, and people use the term “Dumpit” as an oath, reflecting the throwaway mentality of prior generations. I like that. I would suspect that the next generation of oaths will be most-influenced by the Internet. I have already heard of the term “404” being used to describe someone’s mental state, much as we now say “The lights are on but nobody’s home.” It would be a very small step to turn something like that inward, and swear “By the blue screen of death, I hate HTML!” Yeah…that’s a little goofy, but you see where I’m going with it.

Perhaps I’m wishing for a return to those adventurous times, at least as presented in fiction, but Cracks and Shards!, it’s a fun exercise nonetheless.