Invectives are punishable by law in Sweden since the Middle Ages. The aim of this

study is to analyze these invectives as expressions and representations of taboos

in the 1600s. The material consists of judicial protocols from Uppsala University

1624–1674 in which text excerpts from cases that registered defamations have

been examined closely. The data consist of 262 legal cases with 584 instances of

166 different invectives. The lexical variation is thus very large. Methodologically,

the study conducted an inductive categorization of the tokens over a total of 14 semantic

fields. Six of these fields are prominent as they present a very frequent stereotypical

invective, many different variants of invectives with similar semantics,

and many instances in total. The most frequent invective, the stereotype among

students, is hundsfott ‘bitch cunt’ in the semantic field Cowardice. The invectives

belittled and insulted another person and excluded him or her from the community.

The taboos of this historical period, besides cowardice among men, dealt with

social exclusion, sexual promiscuity, crime and vice, and deceit.