question: Why are certain words considered vulgar in society?
comment: My take: it’s because many people *want* vulgar words. And when the current ones lose their shocking vulgarity, people make up new ones (urban dictionary is full of them).
passages: From the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, "vulgar" simply described the common language or vernacular of a country. From the mid-seventeenth century onward, it began to take on a pejorative aspect: "having a common and offensively mean character, coarsely commonplace; lacking in refinement or good taste; uncultured; ill bred". 
   Section::::Language.
  
  Vulgarity, in the sense of vulgar speech, can refer to language which is offensive or obscene, synonymous with the general meaning of profanity.
   For a word or phrase to be profane it must not be religious or function outside the duties of religious belief. To be profane means for the word or phrase to be ignorant or hateful towards the rules of religions. Examples of profanity are words or a phrase not meant to belittle Gods, their religions, but situated on the ignorance and indifference to such points.
   In the Victorian age, vulgarity broadly described many sorts of activity, such as wearing ostentatious clothing, and other similarly subtle aspects of behavior. In a George Eliot novel, one character could be vulgar for talking about money, a second because he criticizes the first for doing so, and a third for being fooled by the excessive refinement of the second. The effort to avoid vulgar phrasing could leave characters at a loss for words. In George Meredith's "Beauchamp's Career", an heiress does not wish to make the commonplace statement that she is "engaged", nor "betrothed", "affianced", or "plighted". Though such words are not vulgarity in the vulgar sense, they nonetheless could stigmatize the user as a member of a socially inferior class. Even favored euphemisms such as "toilet" eventually become stigmatized like the words they replace (the so-called euphemism treadmill), and currently favored words serve as a sort of "cultural capital".
   Vulgarity
  
  Vulgarity is the quality of being common, coarse, or unrefined. This judgement may refer to language, visual art, social class, or social climbers. John Bayley claims the term can never be self-referential, because to be aware of vulgarity is to display a degree of sophistication which thereby elevates the subject above the vulgar.
  
  Section::::Evolution of the term.
   "Someone was quite interested in these words. They kept referring to them: they called them bad, dirty, filthy, foul, vile, vulgar, coarse, in poor taste, unseemly, street talk, gutter talk, locker room language, barracks talk, bawdy, naughty, saucy, raunchy, rude, crude, lewd, lascivious, indecent, profane, obscene, blue, off-color, risqué, suggestive, cursing, cussing, swearing... and all I could think of was: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits!"
   Vulgarism has been a particular concern of British English traditionalists. In the 1920s, the English lexicographer Henry Wyld defined "vulgarism" as:a peculiarity which intrudes itself into Standard English, and is of such a nature as to be associated with the speech of vulgar or uneducated speakers. The origin of pure "vulgarisms" is usually that they are importations, not from a regional but from a class dialect—in this case from a dialect which is not that of a province, but of a low or uneducated social class. ... [A vulgarism] is usually a variety of Standard English, but a bad variety. The moral and aesthetic values explicit in such a definition depends on class hierarchy viewed as authoritative. For instance, the "misuse" of aspiration (H-dropping, such as pronouncing "have" as ave") has been considered a mark of the lower classes in England at least since the late 18th century, as dramatized in "My Fair Lady". Because linguistic vulgarism betrayed social class, its avoidance became an aspect of etiquette. In 19th-century England, books such as "The Vulgarisms and Improprieties of the English Language" (1833) by W. H. Savage, reflected upper-middle-class anxieties about "correctness and good breeding".
   The word most associated with the verbal form of vulgarity is "cursing." However, there are many subsections of vulgar words. American psychologist Timothy Jay classifies "dirty words" because it "allows people interested in language to define the different types of reference or meaning that dirty words employ. One can see that what is considered taboo or obscene revolves around a few dimensions of human experience that there is a logic behind dirty word usage." One of the most commonly used vulgar terms in the English language is "fuck".
  
  Section::::Language.:Cursing.
   In the study of language and literary style, a vulgarism is an expression or usage considered non-standard or characteristic of uneducated speech or writing. In colloquial or lexical English, "vulgarism" or "vulgarity" may be synonymous with profanity or obscenity, but a linguistic or literary vulgarism encompasses a broader category of perceived fault not confined to scatological or sexual offensiveness. These faults may include errors of pronunciation, misspellings, word malformations, and malapropisms. "Vulgarity" is generally used in the more restricted sense. In regular and mostly informal conversations, the presence of vulgarity, if any, are mostly for intensifying, exclaiming or scolding. In modern times, vulgarism continues to be frequently used by people. A research paper produced by Oxford University in 2005 shows that the age group of 10-21 years old speak more vulgarity than the rest of the world's population combined. The frequent and prevalent usage of vulgarity as a whole has led to a paradox, in which people use vulgarity so often that it becomes less and less offensive to people, according to the New York Times.
   One important exception is Colombia, where "marica" is used as a slang term of affection among male friends or as a general exclamation (""¡Ay, marica!"" being equivalent to "Aw, man!" or "Dude!" in English). as in Bucaramanga "marica" can also mean 'naive' or 'dull' you can hear sentences like "No, marica, ese marica si es mucho marica tan marica, marica", (Hey dude, that guy is such a fool faggot, boy) This often causes confusion or unintended offense among Spanish-speaking first-time visitors to Colombia. "Maricón", however, remains an insulting and profane term for homosexuals in Colombia as well. A similar case is seen in Venezuela, where the word "marico" is an insult; However, the word is widely used among Venezuelans as "dude" or "man." For example, "¿qué pasó marico?" would mean "what's up dude?" The word carries at least a third meaning in Venezuela because it often is used to show that someone is being very funny. For instance, after hearing a joke or funny comment from your friend, you laugh and say "haha sí eres marico haha" which would be equivalent to "haha you crack me up man."
   While profane terms and insults tend to be derived from tabooed objects, such as bodily organs and excrement, not all references to tabooed objects are necessarily considered to be profanity. For example, in English, erudite terms for bodily functions do not tend to function well as insulting epithets, although this constraint may not apply to other categories of taboos, such as sexual practices. It has been suggested that whether a term can be considered an expletive may depend on whether it is intended to be applied figuratively or literally.
  
  Section::::Linguistic taboos.:Naming taboo.
   Section::::Classicism.
  
  The English word "vulgarism" derives ultimately from Latin "vulgus," "the common people", often as a pejorative meaning "the [unwashed] masses, undifferentiated herd, a mob". In classical studies, Vulgar Latin as the Latin of everyday life is conventionally contrasted to Classical Latin, the literary language exemplified by the "Golden Age" canon (Cicero, Caesar, Vergil, Ovid, among others). This distinction was always an untenable mode of literary criticism, unduly problematizing, for instance, the so-called "Silver Age" novelist Petronius, whose complex and sophisticated prose style in the "Satyricon" is full of conversational vulgarisms.
  
  Section::::Social class.
   Taboo terms are used as insults, epithets, and expletives because they damage the listener's face, which might destroy social harmony — especially if the speaker and listener are socially distant from each other. For this reason, terms of insult are socially taboo and dysphemistic. Breaking a social taboo can act as an emotional release, with the illocutionary act of expressing a feeling or attitude.
   An example of a taboo topic among many cultures that is commonly avoided in language is disease. While many diseases have been studied and understood over decades, the taboo against diseases such as syphilis still runs deep. In modern times, doctors tend to continue avoiding the term syphilis with their patients, preferring to use alternative labels like "treponemal disease", "luetic disease" (from Latin "lues" 'contagion, plague'), and so forth. In a similar vein, topics such as menstruation have also historically been considered taboo, thereby garnering euphemisms such as "have an issue" and "flowers" (). In either case, both "afflictions" were taboo as they were considered dangerous; menstrual blood was thought to carry contagious diseases such as syphilis.
   In the 1945 war film "A Walk in the Sun", the screenplay substitutes "loving" for "fucking" (the universal American soldier's descriptor).
  
  In "A Christmas Story", the character Ralphie is punished by his parents for saying "Oh, fuck," although the offensive word is replaced with "fudge" in the film. The narrator, an adult version of Ralphie (voiced by Jean Shepherd), explains that "I didn't say fudge. I said THE word...the queen mother of dirty words: the F-dash-dash-dash word."
  
  In the 1984 film "Johnny Dangerously", the character Roman Maronie is known for butchering the English language, especially English vulgarities:
   Taboo language can be regarded as a means to censor, or at least avoid the mention of taboo topics, for fear of incurring the cost of violating the taboo itself. By extension, elements of language such as words, names or phonemes can become taboo themselves, as they can be seen as an inalienable part of the tabooed entity.
  
  Section::::Linguistic taboos.
  
  This section introduces examples where specific elements of language are considered taboo.
  
  Section::::Linguistic taboos.:Profanity.
   In Spain, where Spanish originated, the word is not offensive and it mostly refers to a scullion which is a restaurant chef assistant who is assigned to menial kitchen tasks like preparing ingredients and utensils as well as cleaning them after the cooking. It is seldom used as an insult, as in "pinche güey" ("loser"), or to describe an object of poor quality, "está muy pinche" ("It really sucks"), but only to a lesser extent. Many restaurants in Spain have the name "El Pinche", to the great amusement of Mexican and Chicano tourists.
   Sexual slurs are common across many cultures and historical periods. The most common slurs directed against men historically include accusations of being a passive homosexual (Aristophanes notably enjoyed using such allusions) or of being effeminate; for example, in the Hittite military oath, oath-breakers are threatened with being made into women (a promise of either actual castration, or of divine revenge on the traitors' manhood).
  
  The pejorative term prick for a contemptible person is also usually used for men. 
  
  Section::::Sexual slang and humor.
   BULLET::::- Nonstandard, slang or colloquial terms used by English speakers are sometimes alleged not to be real words, despite appearing in numerous dictionaries. All words in English became accepted by being commonly used for a certain period of time; thus, there are many vernacular words currently not accepted as part of the standard language, or regarded as infelicitous in formal speech or writing, but the idea that they are somehow not words is a misconception. Examples of words that are sometimes alleged not to be words include "irregardless", "conversate", "funnest", "mentee", "impactful", and "thusly", all of which appear in numerous dictionaries as English words.
   The funniest nonsense words tended to be those that reminded people of real words that are considered rude or offensive. This category included four of the top-six nonsense words that were rated the funniest in the experiment: "whong", "dongl", "shart", and "focky". To explain why these words seemed funny, the study's author said "The expectation that you've read or uttered a rude word is raised – and then violated, because in fact it's harmless nonsense. There's a sense of relief – of getting away with it."
   Section::::Causes and motivation.
  
  Restrictions on language typically originate from the need to avoid referencing taboo topics. One interpretation of the notion of taboo regards it as a prohibition on forbidden behaviour or objects, due to their perceived dangerous or sacred nature. Any members of the community who come into contact with artifacts associated with the central subject of the taboo, would be subject to some penalty, unless they atoned for the mistake.
   Loaded words and phrases have significant emotional implications and involve strongly positive or negative reactions beyond their literal meaning. For example, the phrase "tax relief" refers literally to changes that reduce the amount of tax citizens must pay. However, use of the emotive word "relief" implies that taxation is an inherently unreasonable burden. Another example of loaded language is the question "Do you really want to associate with those people?", which implies a sense of disapproval from the speaker.
  
  Section::::Current thought.
   Curse words, or cursing, have been recognized by religious organizations as being able to cause actual mental and physical harm. More recently such words have separated themselves from their religious meanings, and it is doubtful that those who use curse words imagine the words will bring actual mental or physical harm. Both parties are aware that the cursing is simply an expression, and the ones receiving the curse words or phrase are aware they are being targeted.
   BULLET::::- Patriotic purism: involves the elimination or exclusion of foreign elements. Examples include High Norwegian, Korean and Anglish. Many English writers of the 19th and 20th centuries extolled the virtues of "strong" Anglo-Saxon words such as "foreword", which was coined to replace the "weak" Romance word "preface". French, Germans, Greeks and Latvians are known for their preference for coining words over borrowing foreign words (but this does not always work well, since many French words or expressions coined to avoid the use of a loanword (especially an English one) have not been adopted in common language, or are used only marginally).
   Vulgaris
  
  Vulgaris, a Latin adjective meaning common, or something that is derived from the masses of common people, may refer to:
  
  BULLET::::- Vulgaris aerae, the Latin translation for the "Common Era"
  
  BULLET::::- Era Vulgaris, pseudo-Latin for "Common Era" (in Latin this means "Common Mistress")
  
  BULLET::::- Sermo vulgaris, the vulgar Latin
  
  Section::::Diseases.
  
  "Vulgaris", when referring to disease names, usually indicates that it is the normal, classic, or most common form of a given disease.
  
  BULLET::::- Acne vulgaris, the most common form of the most common skin disease
  
  BULLET::::- Ichthyosis vulgaris, the most common form of this rare skin disorder
  