Every major society I am aware of has words that are considered bad, impolite, and taboo. I will be using a number of those words in this post. I will be focusing on English though there are others. English itself is quite funny in this regard.

Here are some common ones:
Fuck
Shit
Cunt
Asshole
Bitch

What are those precisely? They are a string of syllables strung together to form a sound. They are used to convey a thought. In society they are used as insults and invectives.

Fuck

It can mean to have sex with. It can be an invective like damn! shouted when something goes wrong, or perhaps darn as some people view the word damn as restricted as well. The bad words. It can be used in a sentence like "Fuck off!" to tell someone basically to go away.

Shit

It can be used as am invective and shouted "Shit!" which is the same way as Fuck is used in the sentence above. It can mean to defecate, "I'm going to take a shit!". It can refer to the fecal matter from defecation. This is generally what it is also referring to if someone is called a "Shit Head".

Cunt

This has several meanings as well. It can refer to the vagina. It can also be used much like the word bitch, or asshole are used to refer to someone as having a very bad attitude and generally being unpleasant to be around. In a way this is like a much earlier version of what the label Troll is becoming via lingual drift. Some people consider this a particularly bad word.

Asshole

This refers to the hole in your body that the fecal matter comes out when you are defecating. It is generally used as a label to tell someone they have a bad attitude, are being mean, etc.

Bitch

This word sometimes is not considered a bad word. It depends upon how it is used and on who. It technically has the meaning of a female dog, a female canine. Though it is often used the same ways as Cunt, or Asshole are used to tell someone they have a particularly bad attitude.

Depending upon familiarity all of these words can be used as signs of affection and endearment too. It largely depends upon how well the communicators know each other and the tone and facial expressions that accompany it's delivery.

So why are these words taboo?

Why pick these words? Who decides. As with banning of anything it doesn't work. It makes it more appealing. I'd suspect the use of these words increased substantially in the wake of labeling them as bad words. I know a lot of these things usually come from human moral authority standing behind a pew deciding that certain combined syllables should not be uttered by polite company.

So while saying something like "You fucker" is taboo, I could completely get away with saying "You anus dripping green funk from the gerbils rotting in your crack" without ever touching a taboo word. Which do you think is more impressive?

I thought about taboo words yesterday and to me they seem structurally to be much like banning and censorship today. They likely were the result of some past social justice warrior who happened to be in a position of authority deciding something was offensive and thus deciding their opinion should dictate the rights of all and making them restricted. If they came from behind a pew they likely even stated that was "God's view". So now people better not say such things or suffer damnation because someone was offended by those syllables. Over time as this pervades throughout the cultures like a mental rot it likely will encounter other authority figures who feel they should dictate the behavior of everyone else. They might created things like the FCC and mandate there are words you should never utter over a radio station or be fined. Some places you may even face some small jail time for using these words. Simply because at some point someone in a position of power was offended.

The banning didn't work. It makes it appealing to youth. We all know that thrill they get when they first use those words and look around to see if anyone noticed, or when they are running with a group of friends and they are using the word fuck like it has become the replacement for punctuation in the sentences they speak. Would they have this attraction if they were not taboo and banned? I doubt it.

Though there is also another negative side effect to banning and singling out words and deciding they are bad. They can become speed bumps and escape hatches to conversation. You can have a completely valid reason for saying something that if you mix one of these words in the person you spoke to can conveniently decide they don't need to listen to you because you have a foul mouth. No matter how intelligent and well reasoned you may have been the use of one of these now verbal escape hatches allows the high and mighty to decide you are beneath them due to the impolite language you chose to use. It doesn't matter how intelligent you are. They no longer need to listen.

The purpose of words is as a tool to convey thought and to communicate. In truth there should be no taboo or banned words. If you know what the person was trying to say then they served their purpose.

There is another reason I find this interesting. The social justice warrior crowd has a large and growing number of words they use as escape hatches from reason.

Trump
Racism. I saw some SJWs ask a person to define racism. The person gave them a dictionary definition of racism which they started dancing around saying "See you are racist!" simply because the person gave them the definition.
Islam. They will often refer to you as being racist for saying anything about Islam they don't like even though Islam is not a race so has nothing to do with racism. It could be bigotry depending upon how it was used, but they generally don't require there to be context to support their chants of calling you a "racist" it is instead a verbal escape hatch to allow them to not listen and simply chant and attack. It becomes the justification in their mind that nothing the person says is worth listening to from that point forward.

Which is partially why the NPC meme is so fitting. :)

In the English language some words are bad in one country and not another. Talk about landmines.

I think that is enough of this mental stream of consciousness for now