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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Kayla Meyer calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hi, Kayla. Welcome.

Thank you. Well, I’m calling in because recently our elderly dog has been having lots of accidents in the house. He gets scared by weather changes and thunderstorms, all of the above. And my husband keeps saying that our dog is pissing everywhere in the house. And I told him, can you please not use the word piss to describe his accident? There’s a whole bunch of different words I think you could use. But then when I was telling him this, I realized I said, I’m so pissed that you keep using the word piss.

Yeah. First of all, I’m sorry about your dog. That’s really tough.

What word would you prefer he use?

I said, I prefer if he said our dog peed in the house or just like had an accident. I don’t know why, but I just find the word piss to be really vulgar.

It’s crass, right?

Yes.

What did he say in response?

I think he understands and he’s been working on it.

Okay.

That’s a fair response.

I think of P as a much more comfortable word, I guess. And I’m thinking it’s because it’s, you know, what you learn as a little kid. It’s almost like baby talk, you know, like P or we. I’m going to have a we. But the other is a little bit more advanced. You learn it a little later, I think.

I don’t want to say the word too often, but I think piss, P-I-S-S, has undergone this transformation over the last 700 years where it went from being this kind of ordinary word to having some stigma attached to it. There were a number of different bodily function words related to the excretory and reproductive functions of the body that used to be kind of ordinary everyday words, which we now consider coarse or uncouth or even offensive.

And this is one of those words where we now use other terms, or we either use medical terms or euphemistic terms. We might say urinate or micturate instead of piss, which is a word we get from the French, by the way. But you will find that word, a version of that word, in the 1611 King James Bible. First book of Samuel, in the book of Isaiah, and you’ll find it in the 1388 Wycliffe version of the English Bible, and in several plays of Shakespeare, where the term isn’t really offensive at all. It’s just kind of an everyday word.

So somewhere between the 1300s and now, the word underwent this transformation and became vulgar. Part of it was those words became associated with the lower classes. The classes started dividing. Those who wished to be seen as educated would begin to use more educated-sounding words or euphemisms that would distance themselves from the functions of the body that were private.

It’s important to note that this change happened and largely still happens in those people who are rising or hoping to rise through society. A family looking to improve their child’s or children’s prospects might raise them to use this new language thinking that’s how the upper class speaks. And it was really accelerated during the Victorian era.

But there were other linguistic trends already underway, including a movement toward settling on one preferred educated English dialect as the prestige dialect. And marking those old terms, those ordinary everyday terms, as coarse and earthy and unacceptable, fit neatly into excluding them from this new prestige dialect. They were not included as part of this accepted way of speaking. And they became stigmatized and treated as vulgar.

What’s really curious about this is that in the United Kingdom and the United States now, in present day, modern studies show that the upper and lower socioeconomic and educated classes swear and curse the most. But it’s the middle classes that swear and curse the least. So it’s the where the people are striving in this culture of upward mobility where people feel this pressure of not to use the vulgar and crass words the most.

That’s so interesting.

I’m also thinking about what you said about his use of that word pissing you off. I feel like that that verb there is at a remove from the more direct definition of urine. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I’m wondering why I use that and feel like it’s okay and don’t feel offended per se.

Right.

Well, it’s also directly attached to your emotion. So the emphatic component is still attached to the vulgar component in being pissed off. Does that make sense?

So what’s left is this emphatic force. Vulgar words and crass words have an emphatic force and kind of cringe a little bit. And that cringiness that carries over to the anger component of a word like you pissed me off. But we’re leaving behind any sense of the bodily functions. So there’s still some emphatic force attached to it.

This is what happens when a word kind of leaves one realm of thought or one domain and moves into another one. So it carries with it still some of the force. It’s a strange thing we do with language.

And the emotion.

Yeah, we’re strange creatures, the things that we do with all of these symbols we call words.

Kayla, I’m wondering how you and your spouse are going to resolve this.

We’re doing fine over it, and actually our dog’s accidents have kind of stopped.

Okay, good.

Oh, good.

What’s your pup’s name?

Ichabod.

Ichabod. Give Ichabod some pets and some treats from us, will you?

Yes, of course.

Okay.

All right. Well, Kayla, thanks for sharing this with us. This is a really good question. It’s kind of, we’ve had to dance around it without being too crass ourselves. And thank you for helping us do that.

No problem.

Thank you.

Take care.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, what’s the word or phrase that you’re debating in your household? Let us know. We’d love to talk about it. 877-929-9673.