I have read an article in Wikipedia entitled Minced Oath.

A minced oath, also known as a pseudo-profanity, is an expression based on a profanity which has been altered to reduce or remove the disagreeable or objectionable characteristics of the original expression; for example, “gosh” used instead of “God”, “darn” or “dang” instead of “damn”, “heck” instead of “hell”, and “blimey” instead of “May God blind me!” Nearly all profanities have minced variants; the words that are most taboo give rise to the most (Hughes, 1991).

Minced oaths are used so that we may seem less profane is verbalizing profanity. Aside from saying “What the fuck”, we could instead say “What the eff”. But are we really less evil using minced oaths instead of the profane expressions themselves?

In my past two entries, Forget and Forgot, and Understand and Understood, I have discussed how the mind works (without scientific technicalities :P) in the light of verbalizing our thoughts. In a simpler view, the process is like this:

(1) Thought

(2) Verbalization

For example we want to greet our friend Good Morning:

(Sees friend)

(1) Good Morning

(2) “Good Morning friend!”

So everything starts in the mind. So let’s consider an example when we want to say a profane expression:

(1) What the fuck!

(2) What the fuck!

But if we already know a minced-oath version of the said expression, our mind would filter it. Let’s call the second level “filtration process”. :P

(1) What the fuck!

(2) What the eff!

(3) “What the eff!”

So we could see that even though that we have said a less-profane version of the profane expression, we originally meant and thought of the original, profane version. So, minced-oaths are for better-sounding-expressions, not for being-a-better-person. But during these days, better-sounding-expressions in casual, between-close-friends conversations are not that imposed, so to some extent, masking profane expressions is useless. ∞

SOURCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minced_oath