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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 209. Four Letter Words: Serving C-Bomb

May 25, 2025 The Allusionist

Ten years ago, on the fourth ever episode of the show, I investigated why the C-word is considered a worse swear than the others. Since then - well really just in the last three years or so - there has been a huge development: the word has hit the mainstream as a compliment, in the forms of serving it and -y. Linguists Nicole Holliday and Kelly Elizabeth Wright discuss these uses of the word originating in the ballroom culture of New York City in the 1990s, and what it means to turn such a strong swear into praise.

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In episodes, Four Letter Words Tags vocabulary, lexicography, lexicon, society, culture, words, language, arts, history, four letter words, swearing, profanity, obscenity, swears, taboo, slang, cursing, curses, insults, slurs, dictionaries, parts of speech, Nicole Holliday, Kelly Elizabeth Wright, cunt, cunty, serving cunt, African American English, AAE, African American Language, AAL, Puerto Rican English, ballroom, NYC, New York City, queer, gender, reclamation, performance, reclaimed words, new use, semantics, internet, online, TikTok, drag, RuPaul Charles, RuPaul’s Drag Race, slay, rizz, Tom Hanks, Chet Hanks, Colin Hanks, bench-hanks, compliments, body parts, genitals, cultural appropriation, speech acts, sentiment, intensity, Beyonce, Kevin Aviance, Cunty The Feeling, sound symbolism, plosives, coulisse
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.