Romance Books '4' Us: “CURSES! FOILED AGAIN!”

Posted by R. Ann Siracusa

“CURSES! FOILED AGAIN!”

This was one of the favorite expletives used by Dick Dastardly, a cartoon antagonist created in 1968 by Hanna-Barbera, based on English actor Terry Thomas.
▼https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKJolS9Atg

We never find out specifically what misfortunes D. D. is wishing upon his enemies, but the kind of curse we’re talking about today is the “invocation of a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something” kind of curse, not offensive words or phrases kind. We know those.

English is a rich language, with many ways to describe things, actions, and feelings, some words adding subtle differences to the overall meaning. Words are the tools of writers. It’s our job to put together words to amuse, teach, scare, entice, and entrance readers and put them in places, situations, and times they know well and those they have never experienced.

Yay Words! Unfortunately, sometime we use the same ones over and over.

Somewhere I read an article by an author commenting on the use of swear words. He said that, in English, about the worst thing you can wish on a person is to go have a sexual experience. He compared that to Jewish curses, which he felt embodied a true sense of inflicting harm.

YIDDISH CURSES

Taking that to heart, I did a little research on Yiddish curses, and I have to agree with anonymous.

Anglo-Saxon curses often deal with body parts, Catholic curses go for blasphemy, and the Middle and Far East insulting ancestors. According to Marnie Winston-Macauley, “the Yiddish curse has a baroque splendor in its intricate ability to prophesize. The most spectacular lull the victim with a positive opening, which then turns into a juicy, literate, malediction that no mere obscene word could possibly convey. According to the Yiddish proverb “A curse is not a telegram: it doesn’t arrive so fast.”

Like Jewish caviar, the Jewish curse must be savored. So, writers who don’t like using swear words in their novels or who perhaps want to enrich the quality of savoring ill will, you should take heed of the following examples

● May what I wish on him come true (most, even half, even just 10%).

● May he should drink too much castor oil.

● May someone throw salt in your eyes and pepper in your nose.

● May you turn into a blintz and be eaten by your cat.

● May you run to the toilet every three minutes or every three months.

● May you crap blood and pus.

● May you grow a wooden tongue.

● May your mouth be in your rear.

● May your head fall off.

● May your intestines be turned into a telephone cord.

● May God should visit upon you the best of the Ten Plagues.

● May venereal disease should consume your body.

● May all your teeth fall out except the one to give you a toothache.

● May leeches should drink you dry.

● May I live him long enough to bury him.

● May a wheel run over your skull.

●May your tapeworm develop constipation while trolley cars run through your intestine as thieves camp out in your belly and steal your guts one by one.

● May you grow like an onion with your heard in the ground.

● May you live to a hundred and twenty years with a wooden head and glass eyes.

● May you enjoy a good time with plenty of good Vodka – and may your blood turn to

whiskey, so that 100 bedbugs get drunk on it and dance the mazurka in your belly button.

● May you be transformed into a chandelier, to hang by day and to burn by night.

●May you swallow an umbrella and may it open inside you.

● May you get passage out of the old village safely, and when you settle, may you fall into the outhouse just as a regiment of Ukrainians is finishing a prune stew and twelve barrels of beer.

And last, but not least, my favorite.

● May you have a thousand mother-in-laws.

Well, some of those curses are pretty graphic, and they definitely have the impact of some serious ill will. Can any other culture match that? I took a look at some others. I believe the Irish are second in the running. They have many of the same ideas of ill will and misfortune, but they tend to lack the dramatic flourish of the Yiddish curses. I was a little disappointed.

I do like this one, though, probably because of the cartoon that went with it.

● May the gates of Paradise never open to you.

I’m sure every culture and religion in the world has its own version of “curses” to wish misfortune on others, just as they all have their “blessings”.

Curses are not as easy to find on the internet as you might think. When you Google most of them, you get plain old curse words or definitions of malediction, ill will, curse, or whatever word you used to indicate willing someone bad luck.

It’s true you can add “May you…” to many of them and get a curse, just as many folk sayings can be turned into curses by adding the correct words to put the saying into the proper format.

Writers can spice things up a little by using one or two creative curses in a novel instead of everyday swear words. For those writers who are uncomfortable using too many swear words, try putting a few of them in other languages if it's logical for your story, and one character can insult another with legitimate words that not many people know.

Just sayin’.□

Author R. Ann Siracusa
Converting oxygen to carbon dioxide for more than three quarters of a century