It's been awhile, hasn't it?
I believe my last post was on the first of this month. I've been up to my eyeballs in work this month, seeing as it's the last month of school before summer vacation! I've accumulated a whole bunch of neat tidbits meaning to put them on my blog, but I've never gotten around to it till now.
So, let's get back to business:
Question: Where did the term "pardon my french" come from?
Answer: Lots of people use this phrase without knowing where it comes from. I searched it up, and I found two different answers on the same website, a new site for us: Google Answers. Here's the first one:
And here's the second one:
Some English-speakers stereotype the French as permissive about
anything risqué. This was particularly true a hundred years ago when
the phrase took off as an "apology" for swearing. "Excuse my French"
or "Pardon my French" isn't just play-acting that you're speaking a
foreign language. It's also a bit like saying, "I know those words are
naughty - but maybe I could get away with behaving like that in
France, where people are more tolerant of obscenity."
Well, now, I assume that you guys still want condensed answers, correct? Well, wait no longer, here you are:It is thought that the term French is employed in this sense as it already had a history of association with things considered vulgar. As far back as the early 16th century, French pox and the French disease were synonyms for genital herpes, and French-sick was another term for syphillis. The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] also equates the adjective French with "spiciness", as in French letter for "condom", French kiss (1923) and French (i. e. "sexually explicit") novels (from 1749).
The term could've taken its roots in people playacting as if they were saying something in another language besides a curse word in English; it also could have originated due to the already existing French names for bad things (i.e. French pox = genital warts)
Good one!
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