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Kind of depends on the word itself, doesn't it? I mean, the actual phoneme, the shaped sound, carries some of the 'payload' that's meant to be insulting.
Take the P word, as we were discussing last night. It's kind of a friendly word, right? Gentle ribbing, ends in a vowel sound, hardly aggressive. Sounds like something you would pet.
The C word on the other hand ... I have never liked that word. Ugh. Raises the hackles. Something about that pile-up of consonants, the foreshortened vowel crammed between them. I think it would be a fighting word even if you didn't speak a word of English and someone said it to you.
Don't believe me? Add an extra vowel, you'll see. Can you imagine somebody brawling over being called a canute? Me neither. :>
