Help with medieval expressions

...particularly considering that they'd only just barely heard of a bath, let alone body waxing.

Bathing in the middle ages was actually widely practised with there being streams and ponds for everyone to use. The smelling peasant comes from around the Black Death where it was often promulgated that bathing spreads the disease. In the words of a joke I heard somewhere once, Christopher Columbus most likely smelled more than William the Conqueror.
 
Bathing in the middle ages was actually widely practised with there being streams and ponds for everyone to use. The smelling peasant comes from around the Black Death where it was often promulgated that bathing spreads the disease. In the words of a joke I heard somewhere once, Christopher Columbus most likely smelled more than William the Conqueror.

Source(s)? Romans bathed; once Christianity took hold, it was often thought to be a vanity, exulting the flesh. The flesh in those days was to be mortified, therefore you suffered your lice and offered up the suffering to God. (My primary source is second-hand, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint Germain novels, which she researched carefully and run from Pharaohic Egypt to A.D. 1970's.)
 
The oldest known written form of the f-word, AFAIK, is from court records dating to 1310. It involves the summoning to court of one Roger F--kbythenavele. He was wanted because of his offensive name. You can imagine sheriffs and constables going from village to village asking if anybody knew or had seen Roger F--kbythenavele. At any rate, the f-word is old, and if we have a written source from 1310 then it was probably in use in the 1200s. I've not read or watched Game of Thrones but I suspect the swearing is more frequent than realistic, in the same way that medieval women did not too commonly bare their chests for all to see, particularly considering that they'd only just barely heard of a bath, let alone body waxing.

As was mentioned, a now virtually lost form of English swearing survives only in the minced-oath form, and the words are considered humorous. Zounds, gadzooks, struth, and so on are the mild forms of "God's wounds", "God's hooks [hands or nails]", "God's truth" and so on. The minced oaths appear in Shakespeare; I'm not sure if they existed in Middle English. Simply using the Lord's name in vain must have been almost as frequent as it is today, even if it were blasphemy when uttered in the wrong place.

Overall, if this is for fiction, strict accuracy is not only virtually impossible but also not desirable. If your characters speak plain English with an emphasis on short Anglo-Saxon words, they should sound natural. Let them say "bloody" or "damned" and try to see if it seems natural for them to swear. You've got an opportunity to develop characters as well, because some may be known as foul-mouthed, and some might never use strong language at all. (Be careful with idioms and expressions, unless they seem old as time. Many expressions are too modern for work set in the 1200s.)

I'd likely be willing to review an example if you wish.


Thanks a lot for the suggestion. Indeed, there might be more desirable to have a better understanding and feel naturally than have a higher historical accuracy.

I am now trying to write a novella based on W. Europe starting in year 1200. While I have the story, the plots and general outliers, I still need to work on caracters and their interaction. :)
 
and semi-blasemphies "Bloody"is short for By My Lady - meaning the Virgin Mary
Strictly speaking that's not held to be that realistic as a source as it is linguistically difficult.
Bloody as a swear is most likely from association with violence and menstruation taboos.
 
By God's Blood, as drunk as a blood(meaning nobles)....but......bloody didn't show up until the 16th or 17th century, so it won't be used in a TL beginning in the 13th. (Yeah, you made me do more research, prof)
 
Disease also provided a stable of curse words. A pox on you, plague your insolence, a murrain upon thee, etc.

One thing to remember is that while there is always a role for short and pithy swearing, the Anglosphere is an outlier is almost exclusively using those kinds of words and phrases for swearing. Most other cultures also value inventiveness and length in cussing, unlike ours, and so you can get longer and more complicated oaths that strike us and funny or at least weird but that would have worked in context.
 
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