User blog comment:Gr8asb8/Word for curse?/@comment-27606296-20170830084251

I think curse is too important a word to simply be replaced like that. The word is in many respects more like a core word of the language than a loanword with prestige. The word, and its derivatives like accursed, often have a strong emotional impact; for example, if you watch the film The Return of the King, when Gandalf says that Sauron is "faithless and accursed", you can see the Mouth of Sauron immediately react to that last word. Another example would perhaps be in the film The Black Cauldron, when the Horned King, an evil lich, realizes he's doomed to be consumed by the Cauldron, he yells, "Curse you!"; and the phrase becomes his final words when he says it a second time as his body is ripped apart. Curse is used in all sorts of contexts, and in both the lower and higher registers; it immediately brings to mind dark but vivid imagery and taps into fears of the unknown. The word is a very strong one for English speakers, not to say intimate. Illbless strikes me as highly airy and abstract, sounding as though someone was speaking in highly affected old-style English, and so would just not have the same emotional impact as curse.

So I think curse would be impossible to remove by decree, not to mention pointless. As to its origin beyond Old English, I have some ideas, but I will keep them to myself for now.

Other such English words of unknown or uncertain origin include body, tire ("to weary"), big, and bad. But these words are too central to the language to dispense with, and indeed too intimate.