The Little Book of Profanities by Malcolm Croft
Written by Ashley Kelmore, Posted in Reviews
Three Stars
Best for:
Your foul-mouthed friends.
In a nutshell:
This gift book looks at the usage and origination of common – and uncommon – swears.
Worth quoting:
“If you swear all the time it loses all impact and if you repeat the same curse ad nauseam swearing loses its joy.”
Why I chose it:
Our friends gave it to us as apart of a housewarming gift.
Review:
The idea of the book is pretty fun. It is broken into four chapters: classic profanity, contemporary swearing, crude swearing, and compulsive swearing. Within each chapter, Croft describes the definition(s) of the word, shares some examples and, in some cases, provides alternatives in other languages. That part is pretty fun.
For a novelty book it mostly gets the job done. My main issue is that it includes the r word and while it mentions that it is offensive, I think there’s a difference between profanity and slurs, and its weird to include a slur in this collection. There are a couple of other borderline swears that just seem out of place.
Also they say that ‘bloody’ is really offensive in the US. Is it? That’s not how I recall it…
What’s next for this book:
Probably can’t donate it, so might hang on to it.
