swear box
a box to put money in when one says bad words
TRANSLATION
swear box = Strafkasse für Flüche und Schimpfwörter --- GOOGLE INDEX swear box: approximately 17,000 hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
There was a loud cough as the landlord struck the charity bottle on the bar. This is the pub's equivalent of the SWEAR BOX. If anyone refers to certain forbidden topics before 10pm, he or she is fined. They include politics, God, Jeffrey Archer and Anne Robinson.
(The London Independent)
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A SWEAR BOX on the bar of the Freemasons Arms pub at Upper Hopton, near Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, has raised pounds 2,500 to buy a guide dog for the blind.
(The Sunday Mirror)
(The London Independent)
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A SWEAR BOX on the bar of the Freemasons Arms pub at Upper Hopton, near Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, has raised pounds 2,500 to buy a guide dog for the blind.
(The Sunday Mirror)
Did you
know?
swear box
noun
- a box in which people must place money as punishment for saying swear words
(DH)
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WORD ORIGIN
Swear derives from the Old English swerian, meaning to take an oath. The secondary sense of "using bad language" (circa 1430) developed from the notion of invoking sacred names. We could give you some examples, but today many corporate firewalls act much like virtual swear boxes and filter out e-mails that contain certain keywords and inappropriate language. We will therefore leave these words up to your own imagination.
Swearing has a long tradition in English pubs. But as Bob Dylan said, the times they are a-changing. A pub in East Sussex has been granted a late-night drinking licence — as long as it installs a swear box to combat rowdy regulars. Local residents who opposed the 3am licence claimed customers of the Iron Duke made life a misery by shouting, swearing, urinating and hurling beer glasses in the street.
But Brighton magistrates threw out the challenge, saying crime and disorder in the neighbourhood could not be attributed only to drinking. Instead they ordered the pub to make "strenuous efforts" to keep noise levels down — and told the manager to install video monitors and a swear box.
Protest leader Angus Malcolm — who must now pay half the £10,000 cost of the court case — called the decision "a joke". But it was welcomed by the pub’s landlord Peter Lindars, saying "We will charge £1 for a 'f***’, 50p for 's**t’, 20p for 'b******s’ and 10p for 'c**p’." The cash will go to charity.
(for all clean-minded but curious readers here are the missing words spelled backwards: kcuf, tihs, skcollob, parc)
If you have children and are concerned about exposing them to foul language on television, help may be on the way. The U.S. firm Principle Solutions has developed TVGuardian, which detects inappropriate words by scanning the subtitles embedded in videos and pre-recorded TV broadcasts. The box is plugged between the TV and the source of the signal. It mutes the sound while replacing the written word with a more acceptable one. The software contains a dictionary of 100 crude words and a list of milder equivalents.
(sources: The Sun, www.tvguardian.com, The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology)
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SYNONYMS
to swear:
be foul-mouthed, be a potty mouth, bedamn, blaspheme, curse, cuss, damn, darn, execrate, flame, imprecate, talk dirty, use language, utter profanity
swear word:
bad language, bad word, curse, cursing, cussing, cuss word, dirty word, expletive, filthy language, filthy word, foul language, four-letter word, malediction, naughty word, oath, obscenity, profanity, swear, swearing, swearword, tinker's cuss, vulgar language
(Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus)
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IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"When the use of bad language got out of control in their office, they installed a swear box."
noun
- a box in which people must place money as punishment for saying swear words
(DH)
---
WORD ORIGIN
Swear derives from the Old English swerian, meaning to take an oath. The secondary sense of "using bad language" (circa 1430) developed from the notion of invoking sacred names. We could give you some examples, but today many corporate firewalls act much like virtual swear boxes and filter out e-mails that contain certain keywords and inappropriate language. We will therefore leave these words up to your own imagination.
Swearing has a long tradition in English pubs. But as Bob Dylan said, the times they are a-changing. A pub in East Sussex has been granted a late-night drinking licence — as long as it installs a swear box to combat rowdy regulars. Local residents who opposed the 3am licence claimed customers of the Iron Duke made life a misery by shouting, swearing, urinating and hurling beer glasses in the street.
But Brighton magistrates threw out the challenge, saying crime and disorder in the neighbourhood could not be attributed only to drinking. Instead they ordered the pub to make "strenuous efforts" to keep noise levels down — and told the manager to install video monitors and a swear box.
Protest leader Angus Malcolm — who must now pay half the £10,000 cost of the court case — called the decision "a joke". But it was welcomed by the pub’s landlord Peter Lindars, saying "We will charge £1 for a 'f***’, 50p for 's**t’, 20p for 'b******s’ and 10p for 'c**p’." The cash will go to charity.
(for all clean-minded but curious readers here are the missing words spelled backwards: kcuf, tihs, skcollob, parc)
If you have children and are concerned about exposing them to foul language on television, help may be on the way. The U.S. firm Principle Solutions has developed TVGuardian, which detects inappropriate words by scanning the subtitles embedded in videos and pre-recorded TV broadcasts. The box is plugged between the TV and the source of the signal. It mutes the sound while replacing the written word with a more acceptable one. The software contains a dictionary of 100 crude words and a list of milder equivalents.
(sources: The Sun, www.tvguardian.com, The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology)
---
SYNONYMS
to swear:
be foul-mouthed, be a potty mouth, bedamn, blaspheme, curse, cuss, damn, darn, execrate, flame, imprecate, talk dirty, use language, utter profanity
swear word:
bad language, bad word, curse, cursing, cussing, cuss word, dirty word, expletive, filthy language, filthy word, foul language, four-letter word, malediction, naughty word, oath, obscenity, profanity, swear, swearing, swearword, tinker's cuss, vulgar language
(Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus)
---
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"When the use of bad language got out of control in their office, they installed a swear box."
