Scientific American reports that swearing may actually serve a physiological purpose, specifically, it can relieve pain. They have even uncovered the fact that swearing emanates from a different region of the brain than normal language. However, it apparently is not not words themselves which have the effect. It is the emotion behind the words. In this respect, the vocalization is more akin to an animal’s growl or screech. In fact they caution that frequent swearing tends to dull the emotional content of the words, which in turn reduces their effect in pain management. Therefore, it’s important to conserve your swearing.

I’m personally curious about school buses, notorious venues for creative language. Is there really that much pain experienced on them? Alternatively, should we be clamping down even harder on kids’ swearing? After all, if they have to drop a half-dozen F-bombs just to chat their way to school, what are they gonna do when they hit their thumb with a hammer (or more likely, take a friend’s Wii Nunchuk to the face)?

An old boss of mine once cautioned that I should save my silver bullets for the really angry werewolves. Maybe that’s the secret here as well. Save those juicy explicative for when you really have a lot of physical or emotional pain to bleed off. Otherwise, you’ll just wind up resorting to primeval howling, and you never know who’s packing a spare silver bullet.