Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rude, indecent, or culturally offensive; in certain religions, it constitutes sin. It can show a debasement of someone or something, or be considered an expression of strong feeling towards something. Some words may also be used as intensifiers. In its older, more literal sense, "profanity" refers to a lack of respect for things that are held to be sacred, which implies anything inspiring or deserving of reverence, as well as behaviour showing similar disrespect or causing religious offense. Etymology The term profane originates from classical Latin , literally "before (outside) the temple", meaning 'outside' and meaning 'temple' or 'sanctuary'. The term profane carried the meaning of either "desecrating what is holy" or "with a secular purpose" as early as the 1450s. Profanity represented secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, considered sinful, and a direct violation of The Ten Commandments in the majority-Christian Western world. Moreover, many Bible verses speak against swearing. In some countries, profanity words often have pagan roots that after Christian influence were turned from names of deities and spirits to profanity and used as such, like famous Finnish profanity word , which was believed to be an original name of the thunder god Ukko, the chief god of the Finnish pagan pantheon. Profanities, in the original meaning of blasphemous profanity, are part of the ancient tradition of the comic cults which laughed and scoffed at the deity or deities: an example of this would be Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods satire. English In English, swear words and curse words like shit have a Germanic root, as likely does fuck, though damn and piss come from Old French and ultimately Latin. The more technical and polite alternatives are often Latin in origin, such as defecate or excrete (for shit) and fornicate or copulate (for fuck). Due to the stereotype of English profanity being largely Germanic, profanity is sometimes referred to colloquially as "Anglo-Saxon", in reference to the oldest form of English. This is not always the case. The word "wanker" is considered profane in Britain, but it dates only to the mid-20th century. History Words currently considered curse words or profanity were common