Reddit reviews Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Wow it's amazing the shit people have completely pulled out of their asses (totally intended) in response to this post. You really should have asked this question at r/linguistics.

The shortest answer is that words referring to taboo topics tend to sour in meaning over time as they get more closely identified with what they refer to. 'Shit' is a very old word that comes from the Old English scitte meaning "purging". It came to be used as a euphemism for faeces probably around 1500 and its meaning quickly deteriorated from there as human waste is a very taboo topic.

Poop on the other hand dates to around the mid 1700s and so has had less time to deteriorate in meaning. Additionally, human waste is no longer quite the taboo topic it once was so its deterioration is probably going even slower now.

Another possible contributor (and this is just fairly wild speculation now) is that poop is a very silly-sounding word due to the long rounded vowel and the (frequently aspirated) bilabial stop so people have trouble getting riled up about it.

The tendency for euphemisms to sour in meaning until they become dysphemisms and then have to be replaced by new euphemisms is well-noted in linguistics and has been dubbed the 'Euphemism Treadmill' by Steven Pinker.

My professor Kate Burridge has written a few books on this topic with Keith Allan. The writing style is very informal and easy to under to understand, even for people without a linguistics background:

Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon

Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Additionally, if you're interested but can't be bothered paying for/reading an entire book, I wrote a 1500 word mini-essay on this topic last year which I'd be happy to send to you.


EDIT:

Wow... I'm really surprised (and flattered) by all the responses!

My essay is here.

It's not amazing. Has a few minor punctuation errors, I left it til the last minute as usual. Still, it was enough to net me a HD (about 85%, probably about an A to B+ in US terms).

For those who don't know IPA, for the pronunciations of the word "coney" on page 4, the first rhymes with bunny (like honey) and the second rhymes with phoney.

If anyone has any questions, ask, and I'll try (I'm just a lowly undergrad!) to answer them.

Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language is a very good book that might be useful to you.