Patterns (or, the "I'm Studying Naughty Words" Post)

I find it rather interesting that we're currently working through a section about obscenity/indecency in my communications law class (the last discussion involved reasons for censoring "shit" and "fuck" and debates over whether breasts can be exposed on cable), and I'm in the middle of an anthropology article about the origins of curse words (it purports to explain why "you son of a bitch" is a worse insult than "you son of a kangaroo," but I haven't gotten through it yet).

College. Fun stuff.

UPDATE
Excerpt from the aforementioned anthropology article:

Most of the monosyllables denoting familiar animals may be stretched to describe the qualities of human beings. Such usage is often abusive but not always so. Bitch, cat, pig, swine, ass, goat, cur (dog) are insults; but lamb, duck, and cock are friendly, even affectionate.

Uh...yeah...if someone calls you a cock, I don't think it's meant to be affectionate, but the author is British or something, so who knows?