Number of words: 182

Part of the solution to this linguistic puzzle is that expletives like bloody and fucking arose from the process by which one taboo word substitutes for another despite their having nothing else in common (the process that allowed where in hell to beget Where the fuck, and Holy mary to inspire Holy shit). With the expletives in fucking scoutmaster or bloody empire, the historical source is damned or God-damned, which persist today in expletives like Damn Yankees, They stole my goddam laptop, and abso-goddam-lutely. (Damned became damn when the insubstantial –ed got swallowed in pronounciation and overlooked in perception, as it did in ice cream, mincemeat, and box set, formerly iced cream, minced meat, and boxed set.) If something has been damned, it is condemnable, pitiable, and no longer of earthly use. One can imagine this connotation summoning words with similar emotional overtones like fucking, bloody, dirty, lousy, and stupid. They probably took their place alongside damned once religious expletives started to lose their sting in the history of English.

Excerpt from’The seven words you can’t say on television by Steven Pinker.’