Bad Words

In 1844, Sir Thomas Erskine May published a treatise on parliamentary procedure which has been revised at intervals ever since. It includes a list of insulting words and phrases which the Speaker has ruled unsuitable for use in House of Commons debate. Among the banned expressions: insulting dog, behaving like a jackass, cad, caddishness, scurrilous, vicious vulgar, dishonest, swine, corrupt, criminal, blether (as applied to a speech), Pecksniffian cant. Last week the fifteenth edition of "Erskine May" was published; it showed four new epithets barred since the war's end: not a damned one of you opposite, stool pigeons, cheat, bastard.

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