Geoffrey Hughes is a graduate of Oxford and was previously an Honorary Research Associate at Harvard. Prior to his retirement, he was the Ad Hominem Professor of the History of the English Language at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa for ten years. He is the author of An Encyclopedia of Swearing (2006), A History of English Words (Wiley-Blackwell, 2000), and Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English (1998). He is currently an Emeritus Professor and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town.