Fascinating subject indeed.... while I dont consider myself to be a man attrackted by profanity, I feel strangely compelled to add my comments.

I have to say I find it hard to belive that the typical common solider or peasant did not use his share of curses in his day to day language. Shadow said he finds if hard to think the Spartan soldiers talked "like a bunch of drunken marines". And why not, for after all, that's what they were (well, perhaps not drunken, but marines still - the tough-stuff elite soldiers of their time).

A very good point was made by the one who pointed out that most common people were in fact not literate, and that those who did the writing usually had a different level of language than the commen soldiers and peasants. Even so, their spoken language would differ from their written language - I know for sure mine does, anyway.

As for wether a particular specific word has been used, I guess that depends when that word found its entry into the English language. I would find it absolutely plausible if at first the word was just a very pleasent description of love-making and then, as language developt, dropped down to the level of profanity. And as for representing dialog (or monologue) in the modern text of a historical novel, it would be only fair to use the modern equivalent of whatever the contemporary "technical term" had been. As those were hardly ever written down, we will probably never find out what words they really used in the olden days.


Oh dear, now I have gone and written 3 paragraphs on this subject.