Why swearing is so *%!&ing powerful

It has been a long damn year. But you know what studies show may help ease your pain? Swearing.

In this era of endless squabbling over what is or is not offensive, a corner of academia has been pursuing the language that we pretty much all agree is not polite — studying the syntax of sentences like “F-ck you” on the same college campuses where students are being safeguarded by trigger warnings.

Let some social scientists tell it and the way profanity affects us reveals elements of our nature as evolutionary beings, I sh-t you not. “If you don’t study this kind of language,” says psychologist Timothy Jay, “you’re missing an important part of being a human.”

If you’re offended by some of the words you’ve read so far, it’s par for the coarse. Your sensibilities give these strings of letters their potency. “We’re told that these are words, early on, that you can’t say. We punish people for saying them,” says cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen, who explores profanity-related research in his new book What the F. “So we’re training kids, socially, that these words are powerful.”