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Swearing as a Response to Pain: Assessing Effects of Novel Swear Words
- goopypoop 1y agoCan I swear in pain enough to Clockwork Orange myself? Could prove cheaper than the fucking swear jarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
- carpo 1y agoWhen my kids were younger I tried to to replace my swearing by saying "sugarplum fairies". It was fairly successful in becoming a natural replacement. However, the other day I kicked my toe really badly and instinctively yelled "sugarplum FUCKING fairies" and my kids (now early teen) found it extremely funny.
- kulahan 1y agoI read once that there is a common structure to swear words. If you think about it, fuck, cunt, shit, crap - they all have kiiind of a similar vocal feeling. I wonder if different fake swear words may have had a different outcome.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoThe Farscape ones are great. Frell and dren have similar vibes.
- dtgriscom 1y agoI spent two years of high school learning Russian. I can't remember much of it, except the section of the alphabet that sounds like swearing: р, с, т, у, ф, х (pronounced, approximately, and with feeling: "er ess teh, oo eff HAH").
- neoden 1y agoOh, Russian is exceptionally well built for swearing. It provides possibilities barely imaginable from the perspective of languages such as English because of how mutable and composable word structure is. With roughly the same base set of 3-4 swear words the actual number of different forms that could be used goes to thousands and is hard to count, each word having its own shade of meaning and sometimes many more than one.
- oxonia 1y agoTell us more.
- neoden 1y agoFor example, one word which is a form derived from one of the basic swear words can be used to describe/express: 1) disastrous circumstances, 2) extreme surprise, 3) an end-game event making very negative prospects for the future. An adjective from the same stem would make another word with the meaning on the other side of the spectrum, which is basically "really cool, highly approved". An adjective similar but constructed in a little different way would mean "weird, crazy". From the same stem you can make three most common verbs, one with meanings "beat up", "steal", another quite similar with meaning "lie" and a third one meaning "talk". Light modifications of the latter form allow some fine-tuning of the meaning, giving words describing more complex behaviour: 1) suddenly say something unexpected, that will attract the attention of others, causing amazement and approval, 2) unintentionally give up a secret, blurt out too much, 3) get yourself in trouble by talking too much, or even 4) fall down from a certain height or bump into an object receiving a light injury. and so on, and so forth..
- phantomathkg 1y agoSo this is like a more rigorously version of Mythbusters' No Pain, No Gain test then.
- fracus 1y agoMythbusters shouldn't have ended when it did. I wish all 5 of them could have made an arrangement where it could continue.
- ascorbic 1y agoThe MythBusters test was inspired by an earlier study. It's quite a well-studied effect now. Here's a review of the literature: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1416041/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
- 1317 1y agoSee also this wonderful video with Stephen Fry and Brian Blessed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2eWDmUl4_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2eWDmUl4_Y
- lxe 1y agoThis was the first paper I read almost to completion. What a fascinating read. It's cool to see the hypotheses be refuted through experimentation. TL;DR: twizpipe and fouch don't help with pain, while "fuck" does.
- somedude895 1y agoFor the past few years I've made a conscious effort to not use swear words like "fucking" and "shit" casually. I feel like if they're overused they lose their power, to yourself and to others around you. Everyone of us knows that guy or girl that never normally swears, so then when they do you know it's serious.
- gmac 1y agoRight on topic, since overuse does in fact reduce their power to relieve pain: https://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(11)00762-0/fulltext https://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(11)00762-0/fulltext
- HK-NC 1y agoDo habitual swearers need to resort to racial slurs for pain relief?
- BiteCode_dev 1y agoMy alternative is to use old-fashioned swear words like Fudge, Poppycock, Scullion or Harlot. It satisfies my urge, and it sounds funny.
- somedude895 1y agoOh frick yes. It also makes you sound like a goodie two shoes schoolboy from a 1950s movie. Has delivered quite a few laughs and joy to people at work.
- PyWoody 1y agoI have no idea when or why this happened but, in my everyday usage, I've flipped the intention of vulgar swear words with the old-fashioned swear words. Are you fucking kidding me == lol Are you fricking kidding me == Rage
- xarope 1y agoAs a kid, I vaguely remember appropriating some that I thought were from Tin Tin/Captain Haddock, but when I look in the list[1], I don't recognize my favorites :-(. [1] https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Captain_Haddock%27s_Curses https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Captain_Haddock%27s_C... [edit] holy mackerel, you odd-toed ungulate, I found some!
- card_zero 1y agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Fictional_English_curse_words https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Fictional_English_cu...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dspillett 1y ago> This is the first study to find that new, made-up “swear” words do not have similar pain alleviation effects to regular swearing. I think this is in part due to the nature of the words, they “appeal” (perhaps come from) a much older part of our minds than the idea that they might be offensive. The most effective swears are generally about procreation and other bodily functions - the things that we cared about before we even had that much of our current language. Another side effect of this seems to be visible in those with dementia and other age or illness related degradations: some can barely say a few words normally but can still string a perfectly coherent set of expletives together when they need or want.
- Throaway629 1y agoSHAZBOT!!!!
- cptcobalt 1y agoclassic tribes!
- timewizard 1y agoAnecdotally I find swearing makes it worse. Now I just saw "ow!" or "that hurt!" Which honestly feels like it synchronizes my brain past the insult and I can move on much faster past it.
- ethan_smith 1y agoThis matches research on pain catastrophizing vs. neutralizing - your approach of acknowledging pain directly without emotional amplification may be activating different neural pathways than those enhanced by taboo-word usage.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoYeah, I never get the compulsion to swear when doing something stupid to myself lol. People have impulse control, but it may be stronger in some than others.
- kulahan 1y agoI use a mix of both, but when I’m in really serious pain, I also find it’s more effective when I’m just like “Wew. WOW. Yeah that’s pretty good there. Phew. Wow. WOOOW.” I dunno why, but wow seems to work well for me.
- Supermancho 1y agoIn primates there are commonly 3 noises as a reaction to danger. Initially the work from the 70s-80s on vervet monkeys https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7433999/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7433999/ which was then found to be generalized for a host of other primates ~1 for danger in the air ~1 for danger on the ground misc for unspecified danger I would bet that modern swearing maps to these calls in a less specific way. Equivalents of "this shite" "that arsehole" and "damnnit" may have an evolutionary origin.
- ArtRichards 1y agoI was looking for this comment! That being a possible reason why certain words alleviate, they actually operate at a different level in our conciousness.
- codeulike 1y agoTwizpipe
- bombcar 1y agoI’m going to keep this as a replacement for “piehole” the next time I need it with a twizzler eater.
- slig 1y agoAnecdotally, I find swearing in German and Italian satisfying and people around usually don't understand, so no issues there.
- HK-NC 1y agoIbyend to use Italian when mildly annoyed and German when utterly pissed off. How about you?
- slig 1y agoMe too! It just works ™.
- pif 1y agoI had been working at CERN for a bit less than a year, when my Russo-Israelian coworker, who had never visited Italy, erupted in a perfect "Porca puttana!" that made me question my manners in the office.
- fuzzy_biscuit 1y agoI swear in Italian and Russian. Great minds think alike!
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoAt school my German teacher loved to teach us the longest swear word in German (or so he claimed). He would illustrate it by pretending he hit his thumb with a hammer, and then he would let out this wonderful long stream of invective, but which is one word in German. He would then translate it all for us. No idea if it helps with hitting your thumb with a hammer, but memorable teaching!
- MisterTea 1y ago> longest swear word in German Inquiring minds want to know...
- schandmaul 1y agoHimmi Herrgott Sackl Zement Zefix Halleluja Mi Leckst Am Oarsch Scheiss Glump Faregets Edit: It‘s irrelevant if you write it as one word, you certainly say it as one.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> It‘s irrelevant if you write it as one word, you certainly say it as one. True, but you say everything as one word. You produce "It's irrelevant if you write it as one word" as one word. It has substitutable parts, which is also true of German compound words. People are shockingly gullible about the fact that compound nouns in German are written without spaces while the grammatically identical compound nouns that are so common in English are written with them, as if spaces occurred in speech.
- cubefox 1y ago> People are shockingly gullible about the fact that compound nouns in German are written without spaces while the grammatically identical compound nouns that are so common in English are written with them, as if spaces occurred in speech. Yeah. And distinctions that don't even occur in speech are arguably not suited to define the general concept of "word". You wouldn't know from speaking that "coalmine" has no space but "file name" has. I would count them both as single words, because they are single compound nouns. The "space theory of words" would mean that languages without a writing system don't have "words", or that people who can't read also can't distinguish "words", which is clearly nonsense.
- Finnucane 1y agoYou'll sing a different tune when you're getting fouched in the twizpipe.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoGetting frelled in the eema, if you will.
- mjanx123 1y agoThe origin of language
- layer8 1y ago(2020)
- slowmovintarget 1y ago"Glenfarclas!" I frequently exclaim to the bewilderment of my child.
- IAmBroom 1y agoThere's a lovely story of a dad who's wife said, "Lil Johhny said a bad word today. Go talk to him." Or something to that effect. "Johnny, Momma tells me you said X. That's pretty bad, but at least you didn't say the worst word..." "What's that?" "Can't tell you!" <negotiations> "OK, but you have to PROMISE you'll never say it in front of Momma. It's <whispers> booglashek." Next day, all his friends were over, calling each other booglasheks.
- smitelli 1y agoPercy Livermore: We must rid our speech of slang. Now, besides "OK", I want you all to promise me that there are two words that you will never use. One of these is "swell" and the other one is "lousy". Lucy Ricardo: OK, what are they? Percy Livermore: [with emphasis] One of them is "swell" and the other one is "lousy". Fred Mertz: Well, give us the lousy one first.
- EvanAnderson 1y agoI spelled around my daughter. This worked until, between 3 and 4 y/o, she asked a preschool teacher what "F-U-C-K" spelled. The teacher asked where she'd heard it and she said her father spelled it a lot.
- techdmn 1y agoMany years ago, my daughter (maybe six at the time), lost something semi-important to her, I don't recall what. I think it might have been her username / pictorial password card for her school network account. Anyway, we were looking for it, and she said "Dad, dad, I don't know where it is, I feel like I'm going to say a bad word". I, having just read an article like this, said "That's ok, sometimes saying a bad word can help you process your emotions and feel less stressed. Do you want to go down to the basement where nobody can hear you, and say the bad word?" "Yes". She goes down the stairs, I close the door, and she yells at the top of her lungs: "I can't fucking find it!". I managed not to laugh, she comes back up, "Do you feel better?" "Yes." Great moments in parenting. :-) (We did eventually find whatever it was.)
- jacobgkau 1y agoTo think, you could've taken that opportunity to point out to her that saying the bad word didn't actually help her find it. Or you could've told her immediately that you heard her through the door because she yelled. Instead, you raised a casual swearer who's unaware of her surroundings. I hope nobody ever has to live in an apartment next to her.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- qualeed 1y agoIt's comments like this that really make participating on this forum not fun. It's a cute story. Fuck is just a word. They aren't going to grow up to be a bad person because they said it as a kid, and it's wild to say stuff like this to someone when you have literally no other context about their life or upbringing. Your weird negativity to a stranger and implying they aren't doing a good job parenting based on them sharing a couple sentence long story is, in my opinion, a worse character trait than saying fuck every now and again. You have 0 idea what kind of kid they are raising. Oh the horror of a "casual swearer"!
- gsinclair 1y ago
- throwaheyy 1y ago"Theres a fucking goat outside." "No, it's just 'a goat'." "No! It's a fucking goat!"
- irrational 1y agoPersonally I’m more into sheep, but I won’t kink shame.
- goopypoop 1y agoInside you there are two fucking wolves
- chrisweekly 1y agowhat do you call... a deer with no eyes? no idea a deer w no eyes and no front legs? still no idea a deer with no eyes, no front legs, and no balls? still no fucking idea
- hn_go_brrrrr 1y agoThis joke only works in the right accent, where "idea" is prounced "idear".
- ascorbic 1y agoOr non-rhotic accents, where neither have the final R sound
- bregma 1y agoWhy do you ask, Two Dogs?
- anoncow 1y agoThere is also an impact of swear words on pleasure. Also on strength and performance - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1469029216301352 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S14690...
- adammarples 1y agoWhat the jiggins!