Cussin’ is on the rise.

It’s no surprise that F-bombs and associated maledictions are flying around at loading docks, at construction sites, under NBA baskets, and wherever our addlepated chief executive happens to be at any given time, but in recent years they have invaded the more cultured sectors of society. Last week I viewed in a theater an innocent-looking rom-com called Anyone but You. It is a loose and far-removed remake of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, in which sophisticated women, upper-class professional types, mirrored by affluent men, dropped enough F-bombs to make me think I’d mistakenly walked into a Chris Rock concert.

And it’s not just me. Or my imagination. Studies done on this issue have found a meteoric rise in obscene language.

One survey from Britain found a third of respondents used strong language more than they did five years ago. Another, also from Britain, found that 60 percent of respondents said they dropped F-bombs, among other vulgarities, into their conversation every day. (READ MORE from Tom Raabe: The LGBTQ Conquest of America)

In the business world also, employees, particularly managers, are tossing out more expletives these days. One financial and corporate research platform reviewed conference call transcripts from around the world in 2021 and found an uptick of swearing of 60 percent from 2020 and a staggering 80 percent from 2018.

On the screen, big and small, anyone with memory reaching back a few decades surely notices the proliferation of F-bombs, s-words, b-words, c-words, et al. in today’s offerings. VidAngel, a streaming service that allows viewers to fast-forward through objectionable content, has found that the level of profanity, blasphemy, and obscene language in 2020 was nine times that in 1980.

A lot of that increase can be laid at the feet of streaming content, which does not restrict language as does cable and over-the-air broadcasting. The first season of the first Netflix original series, House of Cards, starting in 2013, featured 199 instances of profanity, while season 4 of Stranger Things, in 2022, had 345.

So, the question is: What the, um, heck is going on?

Ask that of the egghead class, and you’ll get egghead answers. Apologies, rather — favorable explanations of and encouragements for even more potty-mouthing.

A lot of attention is accorded the F-word. This word, in my experience, has always stood at the outer limits of vulgarity, the most intense, and verboten, of obscenities. But it is today’s go-to, the most popular, and versatile, expletive out there, capable of employ as all parts of speech but pronoun, conjunction, and preposition. The word has benefited from (or suffered from) delexification, which occurs when a word’s function is expanded to the point that its original meaning is lost. “In other words,” writes Valerie Fridland, in Psychology Today, “a decrease in use of a word’s literal meaning, coupled with an increase in more figurative use, weakens its meaning over time.”

But also, the experts accord swear words practical benefit. Fridland cites research “that suggests that swearing can also be cathartic, providing an emotional outlet, and social, strengthening peer relationships and establishing intimacy.” (READ MORE: Can Blacks Be Racist?)

Another researcher, Richard Stephens, a senior lecturer in psychology at Keele University, points to physical benefits in swearing. Launching some F-bombs seems to deaden one’s pain sensors. He convinced participants in one study to submerge their hands in ice-cold water and then say a swear word or an inoffensive word to see if the obscenity helped them manage the pain. His conclusion: “They’ll keep their hand in the water longer in the swearing condition.”

Swearing also makes you physically stronger. In another study Stephens had people squeeze a hand-gripping device while speaking “French.” “People will grip that with more force when they’re repeating a swear word over repeating a neutral word,” Stephens says.

It’s also associated with honesty, according to some. Said David Stillwell, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, “Swearing is often inappropriate but it can also be evidence that someone is telling you their honest opinion. Just as they aren’t filtering their language to be more palatable, they’re also not filtering their views.”

However rationalized and encouraged, the boom in dirty language still evinces a deficit, a paucity in vocabulary and expression. It seems in many cases to be a fallback for the empty spaces of conversation.

And its ubiquity has stripped it of its power. It no longer delivers the shock it sets out to deliver. Note the syllogism: Its use is ubiquitous; its ubiquity renders it less potent as a swear word; people thus feel safer using it and use it more; this overuse robs it of the potency and effect that it used to convey in the first place. As Steven Pinker once wrote about the F-word, quoted in an article in Elle, “[W]hen it is overused, the word shifts from taboo to normal and doesn’t have the same effect. We’ve seen that happen in the twentieth century.”

It still packs negative power, however, with persons of a certain age and religious or political stripe. Cursing in front of old-school types still moves the needle negatively. In one study, researchers found that bad words themselves leave “a negative impression on others, even those who are not offended by profanity. According to the analysis, people who swear are perceived as being unintelligent, untrustworthy, and less likeable.”

As blue language, particularly the F-word, becomes routinized, it loses its punch and only demonstrates a lack of vocabulary and expression, and even thought. There is nothing more tiring, and unimaginative, than people filling blank spaces in a conversation with a tirade of reflexive F-bombs. (READ MORE: ‘Road Diets’ Will Give Los Angeles Drivers Indigestion)

It belittles them … and the language.

As much as vulgarity’s champions want to deny it, the Irish proverb still holds true: “Profanity is ignorance made audible.”