FiveThirtyEight:
A study
published last year in the American Journal of Psychology collected
“data about the emergence of adult like swearing in children.” The
authors, Timothy Jay and Kristin Jay, recorded observations of children
ages 1 through 12 and adults using taboo utterances, which “were
described as offensive words and phrases (e.g. fuck), insults or name
calling (e.g. douchebag), and clinical terms (e.g. penis), as well as
abusive expressions (e.g. I hate you).”...
If you’re wondering about how the frequency of words in a child’s
vocabulary can decline, the breakdown provides some clues. For 1- and
2-year-olds, the most frequently used taboo word was “poop” or “poopy,”
but it quickly falls in usage as children become older. The researchers’
data showed that “the taboo lexicon emerges early and shifts over time”
in such a way that as kids age, they have more bad words in common with
adults.
I think I was in third grade when I got in trouble for first dropping an F-bomb. Slightly ahead of schedule, I guess.
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