When were swear words first introduced in the New Yorker? Wonder no longer!
From a piece in the Awl...
skank
First used as slang: 2006, Junot Diaz, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”
Nothing special, skanks really, but girls nonetheless.
slut
First used: 1974, Edna O'Brien, "The House of My Dreams"
The Spanish maid had been a nice girl, but a slut.
testicle
First used: 1976, Gabriel García Márquez, "The Autumn of the Patriarch"
Rising up from where they had always dozed on the cornices of the charity hospital they came, they came from farther inland, they came in successive waves, out of the horizon of the sea of dust where the sea had been, for a whole day they flew in slow circles over the house of power until a king with bridal-fan feathers and a crimson ruff gave a silent order and that breaking of glass began, that breeze of a great man dead, that in and out of vultures through the windows imaginable only in a house which lacked authority, so we dared go in too and in the deserted sanctuary we found the rubble of grandeur, the body that had been pecked at, the smooth maiden hands with the ring of power on the bone of the third finger, and his whole body was sprouting tiny lichens and parasitic animals from the depths of the sea, especially in the armpits and the groin, and he had the canvas truss on his herniated testicle, which was the only thing that had escaped the vultures in spite of its being the size of an ox kidney, but even then we did not dare believe in his death, because it was the second time he had been found in that office, alone and dressed and dead seemingly of natural causes during his sleep, as had been announced a lung time ago in the prophetic waters of soothsayers’ basins.
titties
First used: 1976, Saul Bellow, “The Silver Dish"
Morris said that if titties were not fondled and kissed they got cancer in protest.
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