Turns out that hastily shouted expletive could actually be viewed as a type of therapy! Researchers at Keele University found that not only can those lovely four letter words help ease the pain but may actually be part of an evolutionary response mechanism tracing its history back through the generations. No shit!

To test this theory, researchers took two groups of students and asked them to place their hands in icy cold water. One group was told to do so while swearing repeatedly while the other group was told to repeat an innocuous phrase. As it turns out, the potty mouthed students were able to withstand the frigid waters longer than their colleagues - thus establishing some kind of link between swearing and pain tolerance. In fact, members of the swearing group who normally wouldn't use such language were able to endure the freezing cold water four times longer than the rest of their group!

Researchers believe that this is because swearing triggers the age-old "fight or flight response." Swearing increases aggression and accelerates heart rates thus triggering the "fight" response. The team also believes that this could in fact go a long way towards explaining "why the centuries-old practice of cursing developed and why it still persists today."

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon. It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain." Dr Richard Stephens, who worked on the project, said. ''Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists.''