Splinters

"The earthiness of arse seems startling today in a culture saturated with fuck" - immortal sentence from the Guardian article "The Question: Is it OK for a public figure to say arse?" Jonathon Green, compiler of the Cassell Dictionary of Slang, points out that arse was perfectly acceptable, along with piss and shit, until about 1450. It became officially rude in the 1800s.

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