CINCINNATI - Parents may want to watch their language the next time someone cuts them off on the highway because a new book is claiming children are learning to curse before they learn the alphabet.
Author Melissa Mohr argues in her book
A Brief History of Swearing
" that parents and other adults are to blame. The book's publication date is listed at April 29.
Mohr claims a curse work is used about once every 140 words, according to
a USA Today story. That makes foul language as popular as first person plural pronouns like "our," "us" and "we."
The book says children usually learn their first curse word around the age of 3 or 4. Also, Mohr says about 0.7% of spoken words on a given day are curse words.
The book, which is listed at a price of $24.95, tells the story of two kinds of swearing -- obscenities and oaths -- from ancient Rome and the Bible to today.
To read more about the book, go to