what exactly makes words "bad"?

Answer 1

The way it is said.
The intended message of the word.
The people it is said around and how they interpret it.

Answer 2

The intolerance of the person hearing said word or words. For example, if you talk about killing a nun, some people will find it funny while others will find it appalling. If you talk about killing someone's children, that person will rarely find it funny.

Why did I go for the violence theme in this answer? Because I couldn't get away with talking about genitalia....

Bad is in the ear of the beholder. Sex seems to be bad for some. I don't get it, myself, but I do laugh a little at people who get upset by a word, or words. I say "tit," you should have little response. Personally, I laugh, because I am immature and I enjoy laughing at words like "tit." But somewhere out there, someone isn't laughing. No, not one little trace of a smile. That, too, makes me laugh!!!

Answer 3

If you mean what turns a word into a swear word, it's because over time the word has come to be associated with taboo subjects such as sex and passing human waste.

Take the "f-ck" word. It's not entirely certain, but most linguists agree that it's related to the Dutch word "fokken" and the German word "ficken". The German "ficken" is vulgar like the English but Dutch "fokken" is not nearly as "bad". Dutch "fokken" has the same meaning as English "rut", ie animals "fokken".

Originally "f-ck" actually meant "to itch and scratch", then it came to mean "to flick, to move to and fro" and it was taken up in slang to mean "to have sexual intercourse". Slang and swearing are quite closely related and by the 1500's "f-ck" had become a vulgar word.

Interestingly an Australian court recently ruled that the F-word has become so commonly used that it can longer be considered an obscenity on the basis of which a person can be arrested. At best, the F-word is now an impolite, coarse word in Australia, but it's no longer a "bad" word. (Legally speaking anyway.)

What about the dreaded C-word? The word "c-nt" most likely comes from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root "gwen" which meant "woman". Interestingly the word "c-nt" and the word "queen" share this same root "gwen". In other words, "c-nt" and "queen" share a common historical source.
The cognate (a cognate is a word in another language that shares the same origin - they are "sibling words" if you like) of "c-nt" in Dutch is "kont". "Kont" is not a rude word at all in Dutch - it's used in the same way that "bum" is in English.
In English of course, the C-word is no doubt the worst word there is. It's been a bad word since the 1400's.

What about "sh-t"? "Sh-t" shares the same root as "shed" (as in "to shed tears") funnily enough. Both "sh-t" and "shed" come from a common PIE root "skheid" which meant "to split, divide or separate". But since 1585, "to sh-t" has meant "to defecate". (from the sense of "to separate waste from the body"). By 1600 it had become a "bad" word.

Answer 4

The fact that power needs to manipulate you, so they've picked a selection of the most effective and emphatic words to criticise things the power doesn't want to be criticised, and they've labelled these words as "bad". That's all. It's cultural. A culture could just as well decide that "table", "cat" and "September" are bad words. It's only a matter of how societies think and what concepts are taboo for them.

Answer 5

Words in and of themselves are not bad. It is the public's fascination with being politically correct which gives some words that connotation.

Answer 6

this group of 7 angry-at-the-world people just decided to make certain words bad. check out george carlin sometimes. he has a great bit about the 7 bad words you can't say.

Answer 7

What makes a word bad is if it is morally sinful, is vulgar or obscene, is disagreeable, unpleasant, or disturbing is hurtful, etc. All of those are definitions of the word 'bad', and there are many more.

Answer 8

For this i do no longer have my personal words that can do justice unto the problem you raise. those are the words of Helena Petrova Blavatsky from the secret Doctrine. The rivalry is sparkling and surely provable. "The international locations born lower than Saturn — the Jewish, operating example — with whom he had change into Jehovah, after having been held as a son of Saturn, or Ilda-Baoth, by employing the Ophites, and contained in the e book of Jasher — were perpetually struggling with with those born lower than Jupiter, Mercury, or the different planet, except Saturn-Jehovah; genealogies and prophecies although, Jesus the start up (or Jehoshua) — the kind from whom the “historic” Jesus became copied — became no longer of organic Jewish blood, and consequently recognized no Jehovah; nor did he worship any planetary god beside his personal “Father,” whom he knew, and with whom he communed as each and every intense start up does, “Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul.” this can no longer many times be taken exception to, except the critic explains to each and each and all of us’s pride the unusual sentences put in the mouth of Jesus by employing the author of the Fourth Gospel (financial ruin viii.) for the time of his disputes with the Pharisees. “i understand ye are Abraham’s seed* . . . I talk the flaws which I easily have seen with my Father; and ye do the flaws which ye heard out of your Father. . . . . Ye do the works of your Father. . . . . Ye are of your Father, the devil. . . . . He became a assassin from the starting up, and stood no longer contained in the reality, because there is not any reality in him. even as one speaketh a lie he speaketh of his personal; for his father is likewise a liar and the daddy thereof,” etc., etc. That “Father” of the Pharisees became Jehovah, because same with Cain, Saturn, Vulcan, etc. — the planet lower than which they were born, and the God whom they worshipped. obviously there might want to be an occult meaning sought in those words and admonitions, regardless of the indisputable fact that mistranslated, on the grounds that they're suggested by employing 1 who threatened with hell-hearth absolutely everyone who says purely raca (fool) to his brother (Matthew v., 22). And obviously, back, the planets at the instantaneous are not basically spheres, twinkling in area, and made to polish for no objective, regardless of the indisputable fact that the domains of numerous beings with whom the profane are so a procedures unacquainted; regardless of the indisputable fact that, having a mysterious, unbroken, and efficient connection with adult men and globes."

Answer 9

The thought behind the word. Or the mutually accepted thought behind the word.

Answer 10

Arbitrary sociocultural rules make words bad and good!