English Expletives

Someone (an ex student who shall remain nameless) once asked me how many swear words there are in the English language.  

I had to give this matter some careful thought and spent some time drawing up a list of as many expletives as I could think of.   I even asked a particularly foul-mouthed friend of mine for some assistance.    

Bearing in mind that native English speakers seem to devise new swear words with ever quickening haste, I came to the conclusion that there are probably hundreds of expletives and rude words in the English language (many of them of course unknown to me) and possibly no finite answer.  

Language is dynamic and changes constantly from culture to culture as well as from year to year.   What can be offensive to an American may not be at all rude to a Brit (and vice versa, of course).  

Anyway, perish the thought that I gave my ex-student my list of swear words.   I pretended I knew only the most common ones and quickly steered the lesson to collocations.    

During one writing exercise titled “Home life and hobbies” it emerged that my student had a pet dog called Fanny*.    

I could not bring myself to explain any vulgar connotations, but in hindsight wonder if I had let an opportune moment slip.     

*fanny   |ˈfanē|

noun   (   pl.   fannies   )1   informal   a person's buttocks (American English)2   Brit.   vulgar slang   a woman's genitals.ORIGIN  late 19th cent.: of unknown origin.