The World’s Worst Swear Words

Summary

The text discusses the diverse and culturally specific nature of swearing across different languages, highlighting various categories and historical contexts of profanity.

Abstract

The article "The World’s Worst Swear Words" delves into the global variety of swear words, categorizing them into types such as blasphemy, obscenity, slurs, family curses, and references to bodily functions. It illustrates how swearing reflects cultural and linguistic nuances, with examples ranging from medieval English oaths to contemporary usage in languages like Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, and Canadian French. The piece underscores the evolution of offensive language, noting that some archaic blasphemies have lost their shock value, while others, particularly those related to sex and denigration of specific groups, remain highly offensive. The text also emphasizes the importance of family in certain cultures, where curses may extend to multiple generations. The author aims to showcase the creativity of human expression in cursing and the insight it provides into the essence of different languages.

Opinions

The author suggests that the offensiveness of swear words can diminish over time, as evidenced by once-blasphemous terms in English that now seem quaint.
There is an implication that the current most offensive English swear words are those related to sex and those that denigrate specific groups of people.
The text conveys that the significance of family curses varies by culture, with some societies having a more extensive repertoire of such insults.
The author appears to celebrate the diversity and inventiveness of swear words, framing them as a window into the "soul" of a language.
The article seems to take a neutral, anthropological stance on profanity, presenting it as a natural, albeit provocative, aspect of human communication.
The recommendation of an AI service at the end suggests the author values accessibility to advanced language processing tools, offering a cost-effective alternative to more expensive options.

Chapter 2: Types of swearing from around the world

Photo by Etienne Girardet from Unsplash

Swearing varies dramatically from language to language: for example, the Mandarin Chinese word dàn, meaning “egg” appears in a slew of curses and insults related to adultery and bastard children; the Portuguese porra, referring to a medieval club-like weapon has now become the all-purpose Brazilian vulgar oath meaning everything from “semen” to “bullshit” to “fuck!”; Canadian French employs religious swearing (“chalice”, “sacrament”, “tabernacle”) that would sound downright bizarre to English speakers.

“Profanity” comes from the Latin profanus, “outside the temple” and was specifically about insulting sacred and holy objects. There are different classifications but in general, profanity in most languages can be divided into five broadly-defined groups.

Blasphemy is speaking sacrilegiously about God and religion — God damn, fucking hell, holy shit. Many of these terms are now archaic in English. “Gadzooks” for instance, came from “God’s hooks” and was a direct reference to the nails of Jesus’ crucifixion. “God’s bones” and “blood of Christ”, formerly extremely offensive, are now considered quaint and even ridiculous-sounding. Even “God Almighty!” and “God’s Truth” (surviving in that stereotypically Australian cuss, “’Strewth!”) no longer pack the punch they once did during the Middle Ages.

Obscenity referring to sex is nowadays much more offensive (and commonplace) in English. Whether referring to sex acts (fucking, wank), the participants (fucker, bugger, cocksucker, whore), the organs (cock, cunt etc.) and sometimes, the effluvia (jizz), these words form a major component of the modern foul-mouthed English speaker’s repertoire.

Slurs denigrating specific groups of people are also more offensive than blasphemy. These can be directed at ethnicity and religion (nigger, coon, kike, chink, paki etc.), sexual orientation (faggot, dyke), sexual behaviour (slut, whore), paternity (bastard), intelligence (dumbass, retard) or personality (bitch, jerk).

Somewhat less common in English, curses directed at family tend to be widespread in cultures where the extended family is of absolute importance. Anglo-Saxon cultures typically limit this type of swearing to insulting a person’s mother — “son of a bitch” or “motherfucker”, but this is not the case in other parts of the world — compare the Egyptian Arabic يلعن أبو أمك (yil3an abu ommak) meaning “curse your grandfather”, the Northern Indian insult involving calling someone their sala (brother-in-law — implying that the insulter is sleeping with the insultee’s sister) or the Mandarin Chinese cao ni zuzong shiba dai meaning “fuck you to the 18th generation” (how’s that for overkill?).

Finally, we have the various bodily functions (shit, piss, fart) and their associated body parts (ass, asshole, dickhead) as well as the materials used to clean them (douchebag, arsewipe/asswipe).

This book was conceived to celebrate the limitless ingenuity of the human mind and to share the boundlessly unique modes of expression developed over the course of centuries from all corners of the globe.

Therefore, the various categories of swear words — genital, scatological, filth, sexual intercourse, mother, sister — are relatively fluid and will vary between different languages, taking into account the unique cultural and linguistic differences that no doubt offer language learners tantalising glimpses into the soul of a language.