6
" The paces that English puts damn through are rather astounding. Darn, for example, is not a random fudging but a downright game-of-telephone mangling of what began as By the eternal! as a euphemism for by the eternal God. There were those who were given to pronouncing the word etarnal, for the same reason that they might say “larn” for learn—or, for that matter, pronounce concern as “consarn” in Consarn it!, yet another euphemism for goddamnit. That etarnal shortened, naturally, to tarnal. Because this was a substitute for damn, it was equally natural to assume subconsciously that if there is a word damnation there is a word tarnation—and soon, there was. From here, it was a short step to imagining that if damnation had its damn, then tarnation had its tarn, or, since what we really have in mind is a way of saying damn without saying it and damn begins with d, darn. Few etymologies rival this one in the contrast between the beginning and the end, such as the origins of bye in God be with you. "
― John McWhorter , Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever
13
" meanwhile, with cock, in America the basic penile meaning has reigned on through the centuries, such that as late as 1965, Kurt Vonnegut, in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, wrote a father yelling “Drop your cocks and grab your socks "
― John McWhorter , Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever
14
" Grammar turns up in the strangest places, and so often in profanity, as we have seen. Did you ever notice that when son of a bitch is used as a slur, the accent is on the bitch, but that when it is used in joy, the accent can be on the son? Son of a bitch, that was my lucky day! Here, too, the original meaning is obscured, and beyond the degree in “sum-bitch” where bitch remains vibrant. "
― John McWhorter , Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever
17
" I’m not sure anyone still says gadzooks, but it was from God’s hooks—the nails used in Jesus’s crucifixion. We can see Odds bodkins emerging from “God’s body” in Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part II has a line “God’s body! The turkeys in my pannier are quite starved.” (It’s not one of Shakespeare’s more iconic lines.) The Bard added the “cutesifying” suffix -kin later when Hamlet says, “God’s bodykins, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?” Leaving off the g and y, then, yields the queer little locution Odds bodkins! we now vaguely associate with men in stockings fencing on staircases (or at least I do). "
― John McWhorter , Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever