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Ye Olde C***!
A brief history of swearing in the English language
If you love browsing through old maps like I do, you’d have a field day with medieval English street names. During the Middle Ages, street names in English towns (like in many other parts of Europe) were purely descriptive, visitors would often know exactly what business went on at a particular street just from its name. The main business centre where most of the shops were to be found was known as “High Street”. “Church Street” was where the church was located; “Bread Street” or “Baker Street” was where one went to buy bread; similarly for “Fish Street”, “Swinegate” (where pigs were brought to be slaughtered), “Miller Street”, “Silver Street” and “Goldsmiths Row”. “Cheapside” was the side of town where the markets were — and no, things sold there were not necessarily “cheap”! The original meaning of “cheap” was “buy” from Old English ceapan (related to German kaufen, Dutch kopen, Swedish köpa) and from the same root, the word “chapman”, a hawker of goods or an itinerant seller from Old English ceapmann (yes, like German Kaufmann and Dutch koopman). The modern sense of “cheap” comes from the old phrase “good cheap” (yes, yes, like the Dutch goedkoop!) meaning a “good buy” or “good deal” — over time the “good” was dropped, giving us the current meaning of “not expensive”.