of course violate and ravish are themselves euphemisms. guess that was the whole point..

i should probably think about euphemism a bit in the future — i was only considering the sex-negative part of swearing but of course euphemisms play a part too. cheers for the tip, i’ve added a draft post.

i wouldn’t say swear words are arbitrary, since as per the lists they do tend to come from words that already have a meaning associated with negativity (eg. sex or excretion)

what does sh-g-l mean?

The appropriate quite readily becomes inappropriate and vice-versa as part of a process of creating euphemism, which seems to be a way of making private and undesirable matters sociable. It’s important to note what other things are subject to euphemism (death, money, being fired, etc.) and how these terms change in time too.

The long history of euphemism change is also found in the bible: among many sexual terms and euphemisms found in the bible is שגל, which is often euphemised by the masoretic scribes with “read שגל, but say ‘lie with’ (שכב)”.

It doesn’t really matter where in the vocabulary the next swearwords come from, because a large part of their point is that—if it weren’t for people like you—they are almost entirely divorced from their original meaning when acting as a swearword.