Editing Minced oath (section)

==Formation==
Common methods of forming a minced oath are [[rhyme]] and [[alliteration]]. Thus the word ''[[wikt:bloody|bloody]]'' can become ''[[wikt:blooming|blooming]]'', or ''[[wikt:ruddy|ruddy]]''.<ref name="Hughes-12" /> Alliterative minced oaths such as ''darn'' for ''damn'' allow a speaker to begin to say the prohibited word and then change to a more acceptable expression.<ref name="Hughes-7">Hughes, 7.</ref> In [[rhyming slang]], rhyming euphemisms are often truncated so that the rhyme is eliminated; ''prick'' became ''[[Hampton Wick]]'' and then simply ''Hampton''. Another well-known example is "[[cunt]]" rhyming with "[[Berkeley Hunt]]", which was subsequently abbreviated to "berk". Alliteration can be combined with [[Metre (poetry)|metrical]] equivalence, as in the pseudo-blasphemous "[[The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest|Judas Priest]]", substituted for the blasphemous use of "Jesus Christ".<ref>{{cite web |date=10 May 1996 |title=What does "Judas Priest" mean? |url=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_150.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080604002933/http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_150.html |archive-date=June 4, 2008 |publisher=Straightdope.com}}</ref>

Minced oaths can also be formed by shortening: e.g., ''b'' for ''[[bloody]]'' or ''f'' for ''[[fuck]]''.<ref name="Hughes-12"/> Sometimes words borrowed from other languages become minced oaths; for example, ''[[wikt:poppycock|poppycock]]'' comes from the Dutch {{lang|nl|pappe kak}}, meaning 'soft dung'.<ref name="Hughes-16">Hughes, 16–17.</ref> The minced oath ''blank'' is an ironic reference to the dashes that are sometimes used to replace profanities in print.<ref name="Hughes-19"/> It goes back at least to 1854, when [[Cuthbert Bede]] wrote "I wouldn't give a blank for such a blank blank. I'm blank, if he doesn't look as if he'd swallowed a blank codfish." By the 1880s, it had given rise to the derived forms ''blanked'' and ''blankety'',<ref name="definition 12b for blank">{{cite book|title=Oxford English Dictionary |publisher=Oxford Press |year=1994 |edition=2nd |volume=1 |isbn=978-0-19-861186-8 |url=http://www.oed.com/ |author=prep. by J. A. Simpson ...}} definition 12b for ''blank''</ref> which combined gave the name of the long-running British TV quiz show ''[[Blankety Blank]]''. In the same way, ''bleep'' arose from the use of [[Bleep censor|a tone to mask profanities]] on radio.<ref name="Hughes-19">Hughes, 18–19.</ref>