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Why Did “Piss” Become a Crass-Sounding Word?

The noun piss, meaning “urine” and the verb piss, “to urinate,” may sound more crass than pee. But it wasn’t always that way. In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, piss appears in the book of Isaiah and pisseth appears in the book of Samuel. This usage is typical of a time when words involving bodily functions carried little or no stigma. As social classes began dividing, the word piss came to be considered vulgar. Less offensive synonyms include wee and micturate. This is part of a complete episode.

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