I believe the current definition of fighting words is 1) the language must be delivered one-to-one, and 2) must be such as to evoke an immediate breach of peace (as opposed to simply offending the listener). _Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire_ is (thankfully) out of date. According to _The First Amendment Book_ by Robert J. Wagman, 1991, p. 106: "In 1940 Walter Chaplinsky, a Jehovah's Witness, was distributing literature on the streets of Rochester, New Hampshire, when he created quite a stir by loudly telling everyone he encountered that organized religions are 'a racket' and by specifically condemning several major ones by name in great detail. He was arrested an eventually convicted under a state law that made it an offense to speak 'any offensive, derisive or annoying word to any person who is lawfully in any street or other public place'. When the case reached the Supreme Court in 1942 (_Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire_), the justices unanimously upheld the conviction and rejected Chaplinsky's claim that his words and actions were protected by the First Amendment...." According to _American Constitutional Law_ by Ralph A. Rossum and G. Alan Tarr, 1983, p. 379: "The Court has since [_Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire_] defined 'fighting words' narrowly. It is not enough that speech be offensive, or invite dispute, or provoke hostility among listeners: only fact-to-face person insults raise no First Amendment issues. Yet the difficulty of designing a statute confined to such insults has lead the Court to overturn convicts on overbreadth or vagueness grounds even when the speech at issue clearly constituted 'fighting words'" In _Cohen v. California_, 1971 the Supreme Court restated the description of fighting words as "those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent action. [...] "Finally, in arguments before this Court much has been made of the claim that Cohen's distasteful mode of expression was thrust upon unwilling or unsuspecting viewer, and that the State might therefore legitimately act as it did in order to protect the sensitive from otherwise unavoidable exposure to appellant's crude form of protest ... While this Court has recognized that government may properly act in many situations to prohibit intrusion into the privacy of the home of unwelcome views and ideas which cannot be totally banned from the public dialog ... we have at the same time consistently stressed that 'we are often "captives" outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech.' ... The ability of government, consistent with the Constitution, to shut off discourse solely to protect others from hearing it is, in other words, dependent upon the showing that substantial privacy interest are being invaded in an essentially intolerable manner. Any broader view of this authority would effectively empower a majority to silence dissidents simply as a matter of personal predilections." ... (From the UWM Post case (Cited as: 1991 WL 206819 (E.D.Wis.) *7 (a) The Fighting Words Doctrine The Supreme Court in Chapinsky set out the fighting words doctrine. The Chaplinsky Court stated: There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting' ' words--those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. Chaplinsky at 571-72 (emphasis added and footnotes omitted). Thus, the Chaplinsly Court set out a two-part definition for fighting words: (1) words which by their very utterance inflict injury and (2) words which by their very utterance tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. The two parts of the fighting words definition correspond to different concerns regarding reactions to offensive expressions. See Rutzick, "Offensive Language and the Evolution of First Amendment Protection," 9 Harv. C.R.-C.L.L.Rev. 1, 6 (1974). The first half relates to the prevention of psychological injury, primarily in the form of emotional upset and injury to the ' 'sensibilities' ' [FN3] of addressees. The second half addresses the prevention of physical retaliation likely to cause a breach of the peace. While the Chaplinsky Court set forth a two-part definition for fighting words, it applied only the second half. The Court did this because the statute in question had been construed to regulate only language which tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace. The statute involved in Chaplinsky, Chapter 378, s 2; of the Public Laws of New Hampshire, provided: No person shall address any offensive, derisive or annoying word to any other person who is lawfully in any street or other public place, nor call him any offensive or derisive name, nor make any noise or exclamation in his presence and hearing with the intent to deride, offend or annoy him, or to prevent him from pursuing his lawful business or occupation. See Chaplinsky at 569. The New Hampshire. Supreme Court construed Chapter 378 s 2 such that "no words [are] 'forbidden except such as have a direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person to whom, individually, the remark is addressed.' " See id. at 573 (citing State v. Brown, 68 N.H. 200, 38 A. 731; State v. McConnell, 70 N.H. 294, 47 A. 267). The Chaplinsky court held that the limited scope of Chapter 378 s 2, as construed by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, did not-contravene the constitutional right of free expression. See id. Since Chaplinsky, the Supreme Court has narrowed and clarified the scope of the fighting words doctrine in at least three ways. First, the Court has limited the fighting words definition so that it now only includes its second half. [FN4] Second, the Court has stated that in order for words to meet the second half of the definition they must "naturally tend to provoke violent resentment." Finally, the Court has held that fighting words must be "directed at the person of the hearer."