parlance in medieval English. In the Elizabethan era, some playwrights, like Shakespeare, largely avoided direct use of these words, but others, like Ben Jonson, did use them in his plays. The word fuck was likely first used in English (borrowed) in the 15th century, though the use of shit in English is much older, rooted in the Proto-Germanic word skit-, then evolved in Middle English to the word , meaning excrement, and , to defecate. Another profanity, damn, has its origins in Latin, with the word meaning 'to damage, hurt or harm'. Research Analyses of recorded conversations reveal that an average of roughly 80–90 words that a person speaks each day—0.5% to 0.7% of all words—are curse words, with usage varying from 0% to 3.4%. In comparison, first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words. A three-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion in July 2010 found that Canadians swear more often than Americans and British when talking to friends, while Britons are more likely than Canadians and Americans to hear strangers swear during a conversation. Swearing performs certain psychological functions, and uses particular linguistic and neurological mechanisms; all these are avenues of research. New York Times author Natalie Angier notes that functionally similar behavior can be observed in chimpanzees, and may contribute to our understanding. Angier also notes that swearing is a widespread but perhaps underappreciated anger management technique; that "Men generally curse more than women, unless said women are in a sorority, and that university provosts swear more than librarians or the staff members of the university day care center". Keele University researchers Stephens, Atkins, and Kingston found that swearing relieves the effects of physical pain. Stephens said "I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear". However, the overuse of swear words tends to diminish this effect. The Keele team won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for their research. A team of neurologists and psychologists at the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research suggested that swearing may help differentiate Alzheimer's disease from frontotemporal dementia. Neurologist Antonio Damasio noted that despite the loss of language due to damage to the language areas of the brain, patients were still often able to swear. A group of researchers from Wright State University studied why people swear in the online world by collecting tweets posted on Twitter. They found that cursing is