Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by dirty words. It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths.

distasteful language

Until these trains could be restarted, they blocked lines out of Farringdon and King's Cross, trapping other services. Blue-light escorts were provided where possible to get engineers to the stranded GTR trains to reset the software.

Point is we weren't a pack of mediafen barbarians, we were real, live, young litfans (and hardly any of us read any fantasy, were SF fans); but we were from the burbs and we were unfannish.