Being a natural student of the English language, I often wonder where our expletives came from, and also how they've progressed in terms of strength and commonality of use down the years.
When I was a boy the expletive 'bloody' was considered reasonably serious, and any child using it would have been soundly reprimanded. But it became less serious over the following few years, and when my young nephew attended a wedding and exclaimed loudly about one of the guests: 'Look at that bloody hat!' everyone thought it was funny. The f-word is the current serious one, of course, but even that is now becoming very nearly acceptable and used at all levels of society.
What caused me to think about this was wondering how the word 'blasted' became a mild expletive - as in if he does that again I'll box his blasted ears or you're a blasted nuisance, boy. I wonder whether it came from Macbeth's question to the witches: Why do you stop our way upon this blasted heath? I don't suppose I'll ever know.
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