Linguists have traditionally been coy about the subject of swearing; so much so that two of the most frequently used four-letter words in the English language have only recently found their way into standard dictionaries. But Ruth Wajnrb approaches the subject head on, challenging her readers to set shocks and sniggers aside and to examine it like any other kind of communication. The result is a fascinating, and often very funny, book that will quickly persuade her readers that bad language is possibly even more interesting than good. We use swear-words in a whole range of contexts, not just to abuse others, but to express irritation, surprise, even affection, or simply to intensify an otherwise commonplace observation. Historically, as one expression has lost its taboo quality it has been replaced by others and this is a continuing process; blasphemy, for example, has largely lost its power to shock over the past century, and the lexicon of swearing is now reduced to core of about a dozen 'taboo' words of which two, 'fuck' and 'shit', have proved to be almost infinitely adaptable, both grammatically and semantically.