While strolling through EHS, it is not uncommon to hear students spew out many unpleasant words, whether it’s the old H-E-double hockey sticks or the big F-bomb. These words may make some students uncomfortable, but science suggests that swearing can actually be beneficial.

“(Swearing) can be relaxing in some situations,” senior Benjamin Schlueter said. “It can help describe what I’m talking about… and help get the feeling across.”

In her book “Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing,” literature expert Melissa Mohr explains the history of swearing and why it can actually be beneficial.

In one instance, Mohr cites a study in which swearing helps alleviate pain. When subjects put their hand in a bucket of water, most of them were able to keep it in there longer when they said “s—” rather than “shoot.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, the extent of swearing in medieval England was “invoking—that is, swearing to—the name of God, Jesus or other religious figures in heated moments.” By the 19^th century, “darnation” became the popular slang, which was modifying “damnation.”

A large amount of “bad words” was historically based on taboos, such as divorce or even the word “belly,” which was considered a rude word for that part of the body. This same idea of taboo is still present in today’s swearing, such as the use of modern sexual terms.

“… Instead of thinking of swearing as uniformly harmful or morally wrong, more meaningful information about swearing can be obtained by asking what communication goals swearing achieves,” experts at psychologicalscience.org said. “Swear words can achieve a number of outcomes, as when used positively for joking or storytelling, stress management, fitting in with the crowd, or as a substitute for physical aggression.”

Swearing is said to be linked to emotion, similar to the way a car honk is linked to doing something wrong.

“Cussing takes the edge off because I can’t always control my stress, but I can control what comes out of my mouth,” senior Mercie Velez said.

According to scientificamerican.com, using normal vocabulary stimulates a small amount of the left side of the brain, whereas using swear words activate a deeper part of the right side of the brain.

As rewarding as swearing is proven to be, researchers caution too much swearing; the more you swear, the less emotional the words become. And without that emotion, the release these words provide disappears.

Still, their advice is to keep rattling off raunchy expressions. Psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University in England bluntly stated “I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear.”

Senior Katrina Springman does just that.

“If I’m having a bad day, I’ll just sit in my car and just cuss the world out,” she said. “It gets the point across.”