Cursing in Russian

>From Turkish? But who has proved that (or tried to prove)? There's a
>common misconception concerning Russian swearwords: the statement
>that they're (etymologically!) or Turkish origin. Even such venerable
>words like xuj 'penis'< (Common Slavic) *xujI < (Pre-Slavic) *skouj-o-
> 'needle,spike' (cf. Lith skuja` 'fir/pine needles'), pizda, jebat'
>(already discussed here) are accused of Turkish (or even Mongolian!)
>origin. As this Turkish origin is patently incorrect etymologically,
>there's every reason to believe that this is incorrect ideologically
>as well.

It's definitely not Turkish, at least not the Turkish I know. I think what
was meant was that the concept of using sex as an expletive or insult came
from Turkish. The corresponding vulgarity in Turkish would be "sik", among
others. Currently, the type of insults used in Turkey are not so different
from American insults, calling people the names of animals and making
reference to people's sexual histories.

Chris

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