Moses de Boswell…learning to curse and swear the Québécois way…pour La fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste – La fête nationale du Québec

Moses de Boswell…learning to curse and swear the Québécois way for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day – Quebec’s national holiday

Having been raised in a repressive Protestant community, I have always loved to curse and swear. (As small child, I was led to believe that I would roast in hell for eternity as punishment for this proclivity.)

Given my love of profanity, it’s not at all surprising that moving to the province of Quebec was the equivalent of discovering a treasure trove of the most brilliant jewels of cursing.

In 1985, I joined a Quebec City softball league officially known as “La Ligue des Croulants,” which in good Quebecois basically means the decrepit old geezer league. I was 33 years old at the time, and my teammates were all around my age. Today I am truly a decrepit old geezer. Back in the day, that was my status in softball.

The cursing and swearing among players of La Ligue des Croulants was truly prodigious.

The English “F” word, the use of which prompted my mother to rinse my mouth with soap and water, was rolled out constantly as an expletive and as a past participle. But the real meat and potatoes of my teammates’ binge cursing was religion, more specifically various relics of the Catholic Church. Whereas swearing in the Anglosphere mainly revolves around sex and excretion, with a few religious expletives thrown in for good measure, the Quebecois repertoire is almost entirely faith based.

Upon dropping a fly ball or striking out, teammates would string together expletives in stupendous threads. I will provide a rough translation of an example here:

Sacrifice of sh*t of Calvalry of Jesus Marie Joesph of the holy chalice of cursed Moses of dog meat ploughs of the tabernacle…Boswell!

Boswell? This has become my favourite Quebec expletive, a wondrous sound bite and a mysterious exception to the religious rule of profanity.

This is not an esoteric reference to the writer Samuel Johnson’s famed biographer, James Boswell.

Ah no… Boswell (also transcribed as Bazouel or Bozwell) probably stems from the name of a 19^th century Quebec City brewery.

bozwell (a probablement influencé le nom de la bière Boswell du Québec)

Random enough for you?

https://www.laparlure.com/terme/bazouel/

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Annexe:Sacres_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois

And here’s a little additional vernacular gem, just for the sake of variety:

https://www.dufrancaisaufrancais.com/lexique/definition-expression/canada/c-est-pas-le-pogo-le-plus-decongele-de-la-boite/#:~:text=Ce%20qui%20veut%20dire%20%3A%20C,qu’il%20ne%20saisit%20pas

Have a great day…Boswell!

This is a draft version of a sketch for a new book which may never appear, titled It’s all in the condiments.