Leading Article: Hit balls, but do not speak rudely of them

'IN SWEARING, as a means of expressing anger, potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous.' So wrote Ashley Montagu in The Anatomy of Swearing, an engagingly pompous book published in 1967. One might think that hitting a tennis ball with some force would be an effective enough way of converting potentially noxious energy. Yet some players at Wimbledon seem to have enough left over to unleash various expletives - mainly the f-word, both in its unadorned brevity and the Oedipal version favoured in America.

At the receiving end have been the hapless umpires, line judges and even spectators. So far, six players have been fined, with no action taken against Pete Sampras for want of conclusive evidence about whether he actually told noisy spectators: 'Thank you very much and God bless you.'

Not everyone shares Ashley Montagu's indulgent view of swearing as therapeutic. Yet social and lexicographical history suggests that it is not only almost universal (the Japanese are among the rare abstainers) but has been going on for a very long time. The Jews of old were evidently powerful swearers: hence such injunctions in Leviticus as 'Thou shalt not profane the name of thy God'. Religion was until recent times the richest source of invective, and blasphemy long considered a serious offence. Even a few decades ago, children would be reminded that 'bloody' derived from 'By our Lady', and 'Gor blimey' (now resonant of Ealing comedies) from 'God blind me'.

With the progressive decline of organised religion, profanities inevitably lost their power to shock, while Victorian prudery gave a fresh spice to those words of sexual and anatomical origin that now virtually monopolise the the language of profanity. One of the few to straddle the two worlds is 'bugger', derived from the French word for a sect of Bulgarian heretics who, like the Albigensians, came to be associated with the notorious proclivities of the citizens of Sodom.

Over the past few years endless public repetition has begun to dull the effect of swear words. As if in compensation, many script writers, playwrights and comedians splice them into virtually every other sentence. Often the aim appears to be either to achieve a spurious intimacy with the audience, or to impart a patina of street credibility. With the law of diminishing returns, a fresh set of monosyllables will surely soon be needed - but not from the lips of tennis players. Swearing has its place as a safety valve. It should not be required when potentially noxious energies are already being released in a competitive sport.