”Bad words” appear in every language and take many forms. Some are impious, copulatory or excretory; others are slurs of one sort of another. Most of us were raised to think of cursing as a vice to be cured. But there’s a reason that swearing is such a universal practice, across time and place. Researchers led by the psychologist Richard Stephens at Keele University in Staffordshire, England,...

Source: Wall Street Journal January 12, 2018 18:39 UTC