10 ms·
Naughty words: What makes swear words so offensive?
- LouisSayers 11y agoIt is funny how swearing offense differs quite dramatically in cultures. In NZ for instance being called a 'good cunt' is like a lower class way of giving a compliment - basically 'good person'. In other places e.g. the UK, the sight of the word 'cunt' gets them riled up - the word 'good' is lost in translation.
- jacalata 11y agoHa, you should see how badly it's received in the US for a real contrast.
- Mandatum 11y agoAs a kiwi who mistakenly slipped that out among friends (who were familiar with it) at a bar in the US.. Oh god.. I know.
- omegaham 11y agoThe most interesting illustration of this was John McCain calling his wife a cunt in front of reporters... and he got away with it because none of them could actually report on it due to it being so shocking and offensive. This wouldn't fly today, as people online will post anything, but in 1992, it literally did not get airtime or newspaper coverage because no newspaper would print it, and no TV network would even allude to it.
- pluma 11y agoAs a German I'm routinely confused by Americans referring to "the $initialLetter-word", especially when it's not obvious from context. I understand avoiding the "n-word" because of America's still ever-present latent racism, and I can kinda understand avoiding the "f-word" because of a schizophrenic attitude to sex based on Puritan "family values", but I'm still at a loss whenever I see all kinds of other letters of the alphabet pop up now and then with no indication what the speaker is actually trying to refer to. EDIT: Apparently HN ratelimits me whenever I get downvoted. Yay for passive aggressive auto-moderation.
- tlarkworthy 11y agonot in Scotland[1], England yes. [1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cunt+(Scottish+Definition) http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cunt+(Scottis...
- drsim 11y agoonly around Glasgow: it still carries a sting in Aberdeen, where I'm from
- koralatov 11y agoHighlander here, now living in Aberdeen. The usage you linked to is prevalent only in the Central Belt; up here, it still carries a derogatory implication unless it's being used by close friends. Also worth noting that I've never, ever heard a woman from the Central Belt using it in the way UD describes, only men.
- davb 11y agoI moved from Glasgow to Aberdeen (and stayed there for a decade) and it was noticeable how differently they treat that word. Even in situations where swear words were flying, breaking out "cunt" would put pause to the conversation. It was strange, and amusing. Women from Glasgow certainly use that word. Just as frequently as men. That's not to say all women, or all men, but in equal proportion.
- jdking 11y agoIn Scotland, 'cunt' simply means 'person'.
- jwdunne 11y ago'Cunt' isn't so bad when it comes to banter and jest in the UK. Typically male banter. Many females seem to take an offense to it no matter the context.
- pluma 11y agoI'm curious what makes the "c-word" so much more offensive than other vulgar insults based on female genitalia -- and even more so those based on male genitalia. I feel like as a non-native speaker I must be missing a significant cultural subtext everybody else seems to be painfully aware of (similar to how someone who's never heard of racial segregation and slavery in the US would be confused why the "n-word" strikes such a nerve).
- jschwartzi 11y agoAs far as I know, the difference is intent. Calling someone a cunt is a much greater expression of contempt than calling them a fucker or an asshole. Call someone one of the latter words and there's still a chance it might be affectionate. Call someone a cunt and it removes all doubt.
- pluma 11y agoI get that, but that doesn't seem to be universal at all. There are many communities and regions where "cunt" (or the regional equivalent) doesn't raise any eyebrows. Why is it that the word is so much more offensive in the US (and England too, apparently) than, say, certain parts of Scotland or Australia?
- jwdunne 11y agoIt's not universal. Cultural definitions count. It's similar to the word 'fanny'. In the US, it seems it means 'bum'. The word 'fannypack' would translate to 'vagina pack' in the UK, which is pretty funny to hear. The equivalent in the UK is bumbag, where bum is the non-offensive version of arse (which is ass in the US). Or, for those offended by my slew of filth above, similar to the old chips-crisps problem. American Chips = British Crisps. British Chips = American Fries.
- bobwaycott 11y agoYeah, this always amuses me. Back in September, I went to Munich for Oktoberfest. I spent one evening with a couple Australian women who unexpectedly raised their glasses and shouted, "Cheers, cunts!" Needless to say, as an American man, I immediately looked around, worried that someone was going to be highly offended. I nervously laughed and said, "Cheers," then explained there was no way I could add "cunts" to the end, especially not to a couple of women. They laughed at me, and explained how frequently they used it in Australia. They then made a point to keep doing it all night.
- tluyben2 11y agoI cannot think of any word my friends or me would find offensive which is why I have to take care not to say the wrong things when in other countries. I was raised in the Netherlands in schools where we had plenty of religious discourse and we all (my friend group) became atheist, so anything using the lord's name in vain wouldn't bother me at all; it doesn't even register most of the time. And then most of our parents didn't want to shield us much from the big-bad-world, so swearing US humor and UK humor were normal as well. I really didn't know until I met my aunt from Canada for the first time when I was 9 or 10 that 'fuck' is not normal in some circles. Note this was the early 80s; no internet, very limited communication besides few BBS's + magazines + tv + local (Dutch, no foreigners) events. I don't see anything wrong with it; some words are just 'stop words' but to respect other people's feelings I try not to use anything that I know is considered 'bad' in those circles. It always amazes me that rich/educated people swear a lot and poor/uneducated people swear a lot but in between (middle-class) everyone is ultra polite. At least that is what I found from the limited (as one person of course experiences cannot be very broad) set of meetings in NL/UK/US.
- kedean 11y ago>It always amazes me that rich/educated people swear a lot and poor/uneducated people swear a lot but in between (middle-class) everyone is ultra polite Makes sense though. The poor don't have anything to lose by offending someone else, and are likely the people who would be most offended by some curse words in the first place. The rich don't care because everyone else looks up to them for their money anyway, who's going to call them out? The middle class have everything to lose if the wrong person is offended by what they say.
- david-given 11y agoIn Glasgow, among certain subcultures, 'fuck' or 'fucking' is basically meaningless. I one took a long taxi trip across Glasgow. The driver was cheery, amiable, very Glaswegian, and almost incomprehensible; and I'm Scottish! I could understand about 50% of everything he said, because 50% of what he said was 'fucking'. He used it as an adjective on (as far as I could tell through his accent) every noun. It seemed to be used as a flavour enhancer --- good things were fucking great; bad things were fucking awful. Rain was fucking wet, the roads were fucking slippery, as it was nighttime it was fucking dark, etc, etc. It certainly wasn't being used in its literal sense. I'm not part of that subculture, but I didn't find it the slightest bit offensive, merely interesting and rather weird.
- mathgenius 11y agoToday's grammar challenge, should you choose to accept it: (1) use the word "lavatorial" in a sentance. (2) use the expression "How brilliant was it? Fucking." with enough gusto to convey the meaning. (The article claims it doesn't make any sense, but i think this could in fact work.)
- qu4z-2 11y agoThe article also says that you wouldn't say "Wash the dishes and fuck you." I mean, yes, fuck you isn't imperative, but I can totally imagine someone saying that in certain situations.
- ludamad 11y agoIm inclined to agree that this isn't a farfetched extension of a very versatile word.
- adwf 11y agoAn astronaut's lavatorial endeavours are never easy. The 2nd challenge is even easier, you just need good timing :)
- Raticide 11y agoThe 'fucking pleb' statement wasn't bad because of swearing it was for calling him a 'pleb'. For those that don't know, it's a derogatory term used by the upper class for the working class. Also it turns out that the police officer lied about the whole thing.
- markdown 11y ago> For those that don't know, it's a derogatory term used by the upper class for the working class. It means commoner. Most people first hear it in high school english class... for me it was Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
- arethuza 11y agoPleb/plebian has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebs
- pluma 11y agoFun fact: "pleb"/"plebian" has similarities to "Prolet"/"Proletarier" in German: "Prolet" is a social slur with similar implications as "pleb" (when used as an insult): unsophisticated, unskilled, bottom feeder, likely unemployed living off welfare and drunk. "Proletarier" OTOH simply means "proletarian", i.e. a worker. It's not used in colloquial language but historically occurred in politics (for obvious reasons) and still pops up in some contexts. While "Prolet" is entirely derogatory, "Proletarier" is either neutral or positive. While the English "plebian" seems to date back to Roman times, AFAICT the German "Proletarier" is relatively recent (i.e. early communist era).
- dendory 11y agoIn Quebec a lot of our modern taboo words are religious themed. Unlike many other cultures however, it's not religion that made them taboo, but rather the fact that we had a heavier than most religious presence in our political and education systems up to the 1960s, and when we 'woke up' as it were, a lot of religious terms became swear words. Today the province is much less religious than say the US, on average, and most of our swear words remain that way.
- hausen 11y agoAlthough it may be true that "les sacres" (swear words derived from religious terms) were a form of insurgency against the power of the church, their usage extends far back into the beginning of the 19th century: http://www.maisonsaint-gabriel.qc.ca/fr/musee/chr-20.php http://www.maisonsaint-gabriel.qc.ca/fr/musee/chr-20.php
- SixSigma 11y agoIn Finland the highest category swear word is "Perkele" which they call "the P word". It translates as "devil"
- Wildgoose 11y agoInteresting! That immediately made me think of the fabulous independent movie "Star Wreck: In the Perkinning" and the "P-fleet". Well worth watching by the way, it's a humorous take on Star Trek and Babylon 5. The effects were made by a render-farm of PCs in their kitchen whilst a bedroom was set up for blue screen work. It was even shown on Finnish national television.
- jpatokal 11y agoUhh, no. Vittu, literally "cunt", is the Finnish equivalent of "fuck" and is used with similar disregard to its notional meaning (fucking cheeseburger = vitun juustohampurilainen). Kind of like those Quebecois swears, perkele manages to be both rude and formal: it's used in Finnish translations of the Bible for "Devil".
- ranebo 11y agoA year or so ago while my Japanese in-laws were visiting, my brother asked them if they would like to try a new swearing card game he was kickstarting(1). I was hesitant to let this happen as although my wife's parents didn't really know the meaning of the words, they knew they were "swear" words, and that might be seen as inappropriate. In the end this was just my predefined view of what a "swear" word was, clouding my judgement, and everyone had a good time. My in-laws later explained to me that although they knew "swear" words were meant to be offensive, they couldn't wrap their heads around why/how, and as such happily yelled "Cunt!" as easily as they would "Potato!". (1) http://www.f--kthegame.com/ http://www.f--kthegame.com/
- RodericDay 11y agoI am very new at japanese, so don't take my word for this, but there aren't a lot of "motherfucker" style insults in japanese. You mostly insult people by talking to them with the wrong politeness level. The meaning of the word is still something like "you". http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/insults.html http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/insults.html
- ranebo 11y agoYep thats kind of my point, the idea that a word by itself, regardless of intent could be offensive, made absolutely no sense to them. To put it into perspective, I've seen nearly every word on your list in different childrens cartoons/anime.
- harisenbon 11y agoYou are mostly correct, it is one of the more interesting things about Japanese that the context outweighs the use of the word in many situations. That being said, there are a number of words that are NEVER appropriate out of starting a fight. Probably not as many as English, but I can think of about 20 or so off the top of my head.
- ekianjo 11y agoJapanese insults are never as simple as the ones in US English. Its usually expressions rather than words alone. But the best languages for swearing are probably the latin languages such as French Spanish and Italian. They have all very colorful expressions and a high variety of ways to express them. English and American English are extremely limited in comparison.
- rl3 11y agotl;dr These words are offensive primarily because of the implicit cultural taboos associated with them. I'd argue this is unfortunate, since many people are quick to take offense without first examining the specific intent or context behind a word's use in a particular situation.
- ghshephard 11y agoFrom the article: Etiquette dictates that we hold our fork in our left hand and our knife in our right - This is interesting, because I was taught to hold my fork in my left hand, knife in my right initially, but after cutting food, switch the fork to my right hand. A bit of googling shows this is not universal.
- eru 11y agoUS and European rules are different there, because Americans emigrated before European elites had settled on a standard. Yours seems to be the American standard. Oh, and in parts of Asia they eat with fork and spoon. Martin Luther famously complained about the then-new forks, since God had given every man hands after all, hadn't he?
- PakG1 11y agoYes, although such a silly rule isn't staying still. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/06/fork_and_knife_use_americans_need_to_stop_cutting_and_switching.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/06/fork_a... I remember a story how the Nazis in WW2 would identify American spies in Germany by observing how they held and used their cutlery in restaurants. Sadly, I was unable to find the story just now.
- kijin 11y agoEuropean etiquette also dictates that you cut and eat one piece at a time instead of pre-cutting everything. So you'll need your knife throughout the dinner. No time to switch the fork to your right hand.
- david-given 11y agoYup, British person here. That's exactly how it works. We do eat one-handed, but it's typically an either/or thing, rather than switching from one to the other during the course of the meal. The US thing of cutting up all your food ahead of time before eating it is practically unheard of here, and the few times I've noticed people doing it it's always looked very strange.
- jacquesm 11y agoGeorge Carlin said this best I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqvLTJfYnik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqvLTJfYnik
- kijin 11y agoThe Korean phrase mentioned in the article doesn't make any sense. I can guess where it came from, but it looks like the author put the English version through Google Translate in an attempt to get the original. Not many swear words will survive that kind of abuse.
- rossg 11y agoI was going to point this out when I saw your comment. I've also never heard this used in practice by anyone. IMO Korean has some of the most colorful insults and curse words.
- pluma 11y agoSimilarly, "Mutterficker" while a literal translation to German, is not exactly common. I'm guessing if it exists at all it's likely a direct adaptation from English language media (like "verfickt" -- "fucked"/"fucking" -- which seems to be a literal translation merged with "verflixt" which in turn is a minced oath for "verflucht" -- "damn"). I'm also not convinced exclamations like "Gottverdammt!" (similar to the Dutch phrase) and "Verfickte Scheiße!" (closest equivalent to "Fuck!" I can think of) are offensive in the same way. Outside of deeply religious groups the former would mostly be frowned at for being needlessly elaborate ("Verdammt!" would suffice) whereas the latter would be frowned at for simply being obscene -- quantity vs quality basically. I also can't find anything in the article properly addressing the use of swear words for other things than intentional vulgarity or insult. The "escalation" theory doesn't work for exclamations in reaction to pain/mistakes/mishaps (e.g. dropping something heavy on your foot). It doesn't seem to address the existence of minced oaths either (which from the starting point of actual swearwords actually de-escalate by acknowledging the offensiveness of the unminced oaths).
- david-given 11y agoMy German teacher once brought along a couple of photocopied pages from the infamous anarchist German textbook, Deutsch für den Ausländer. It's a selection of bizarre stories about some even more bizarre characters. In one of them, the hero, who is a loser wannabe rapper, gets into a shouting match with a rival rapper. The dialogue goes, "Fick dein Mütter! Fick dein Hund! Fick dein ... etc, etc." Then he pisses himself, hides under a bus, and is eventually taken home by the bus driver. So, anyway, that's how I remember imperative informal verbs in German.
- s3arch 11y ago>Swearing, then, is as offensive as it is not because of some magic ingredient possessed by swear words but lacked by other words, but because when we swear, our audience knows that we do so in the knowledge that they will find it offensive. Interestingly, While I was a kid, I used to think that since God created Darkness and Light, he must have created both Good and Bad.... But later as I grew up, I have realized that, its the purpose and end-results of something things we do, defines it either good or bad.
- hcrisp 11y agoIt is a matter of the heart, which is why the final statement in the article that swearing is not immoral rings hollow. The author tries to deconstruct what swearing is, but fails to mention "cursing" which calls evil down on someone (hate speech indeed), or "oaths" whereby one binds the validity of their word to something or someone of more worth than themself (e.g., swearing in a court of law, or phrases like the Roman's "by Jove"). Today, other than cursing, what we call swearing now is more related to vulgarity and blasphemy. All of which are harmful (and immoral) speech given the right motives. A much more edifying article about the morality of swearing is this one: http://www.pement.org/docs/swearing.htm http://www.pement.org/docs/swearing.htm
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- workusername 11y agoCoincidentally, I listened to this yesterday: http://philosophybites.com/2015/03/rebecca-roache-on-swearing.html http://philosophybites.com/2015/03/rebecca-roache-on-swearin...
- ronakbkakkad1 11y agoSwearing basically is a personal approach and different words mean completely different to different people.
- wapapaloobop 11y agoI don't think this gets to the heart of how words can become taboo in the first place. It's because they evoke associations and imagery in the listener's mind which are gross (e.g. bad smells, STDs, jealousy). Moreover, the listener is complicit in this grossness because it's the listener's mind which generates the imagery. Gratuitous swearing isn't merely ugly: it actively lowers the tone of a conversation. Sometimes the tone needs to be lowered. But now it's harder for sensitive listeners to think, so we risk losing the benefit of their wisdom.
- pluma 11y agoOkay, but this only works for certain swearwords in certain cultures. It also assumes vigorous sexual intercourse (i.e. "fuck") is gross, which is either extremely prude or childish. I'd argue that some swearwords actually merely signify intensity and can be entirely neutral to the "tone of the conversation" (in terms of the subject matter and concepts the conversation can address). If you tell someone they did a "fucking great job" the only way that would affect the conversation negatively (sarcasm etc aside) would be if the phrasing offends the other person's sensibilities. I'm guessing the falls in the same category as the "mock insults" theory (i.e. close friends casually insulting each other to signal their intimacy rather than actually causing offense).
- noja 11y agoI don't agree. It depends on the word, but when I hear a swear word, I do not think of the image of the meaning.