Usher, who is no relation of Poe’s unfortunate family, has, I hear, decreed that jeans and trainers are not enough. Usher is an African-American singer, with a new interest in gentility. He is shocked by people not saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and he is disgusted by ‘profanity’.
Profanity in this context is language of the kind used after 9 p.m. on the television. It means rude words that are not necessarily blasphemous — you know the f-word, and mother, though Americans, even of a gangsta disposition, seem less given to the c-word. Profanity is not literally ungodly, but then nor is swearing, for to say f—– is no more swearing a false oath than it is taking the name of God in vain. But the odd thing is that the word profanity is found in no English dictionary before 1820.
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