Question of the Day: Sunday, February 27

[gilmargl]

The sun is shining, the snowdrops are out, it's bitterly cold and two months of 2023 have almost disappeared into the never-to-be-seen-again past!
Let's try to make the most of the remaining 10 months, starting today!

So, good morning everyone!
Having spilt a tin of drawing pins on the carpet, and dripping blood after stupidly trying to catch the tin with a handful of selected pins in one hand, I feel like swearing! But, I was brought up not to, by a mother, who finally learnt the freedom of being able to swear like a trooper, well before her 98th birthday!

But I'm still at the "for Pete's sake!", "for crying out loud!", "sugar!", "Scheibenkleister!" stage when I need to let off steam. But, being rather self-controlled, I usually just keep my mouth closed and grit my teeth.

Do you swear - or do you use veiled swearwords instead? Let's hear them, even if they are in a foreign language!

By the way, "Scheibenkleister" - if it were an article to buy, would be disc paste or glass glue! Evidently there is a record shop with this name!

 

[Norachan]

Scheibenkleister sounds wonderful! I'm going to add that to my repertoire.

I swear like a drunken sailor, but I always try to be very polite on the forums or in company. My favourite expressions in Japanese are Yabai, which means risky but can also mean cool. I like Bonkura as an insult, that means blockhead.

The best one of all though is omai no kachan debeso. Roughly translated it means your mother's belly button sticks out.

 

[di and bob]

I swear, though lately, I have been really trying not to. I don't agree with the younger generation using the 'F' word in every sentence, it still shocks me, though I hear it time and time again. Maybe they think it is 'cool' but I think it just shows how immature they are and their lack of self-control. Is there any self-control anymore?! I think of my mother's favorite swear words now, "hell's bells". I also remember her yelling at my father for swearing when he hit his thumb with a hammer, telling him to go to the garage if he must swear like that. We still learned all the good ones from him!

 

[Winchester]

Well, I can put a sailor to shame sometimes. I like to say that I learned it from working in the paper plant, but, truth be told, I could out-cuss my coworkers at any given time. One night, I was working with a new hire and my web broke. I went through a long litany of cuss-words and then started making some up. Later on, I found out that he had told a friend, "Man, I thought she was quiet! And then all hell broke loose!" It's the way I am. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it either.

 

[misty8723]

I swear like a drunken sailor, but I always try to be very polite on the forums or in company.

I do as well. I learned it from my sister, who learned it in high school. But I also use non swear words like fudge ripple.

 

[Jem]

I have the mouth of a trucker. I probably swear too much, but oh well. I use real swear words, but I am able to contain myself when the occasion calls for it, like in front of kids or even some adults I just don't like to swear in front of out of respect.
I'm both French and English so I also have an arsenal of French swear words, which are basically all blasphemy...and it seems that the French really comes out when I'm especially mad or frustrated with myself. Like trying to accomplish a task and it's not going very well.
If I use a "veiled" version of a swear word, It tends to just slip out as whatever my brain was able to come out with on the fly...I've had some pretty interesting garble come out of my mouth, "mother fugglenut" is one that I remember saying before...

It's funny...even though I swear quite a bit, there are two that I just never use. They are simply too vulgar for me, and don't come out naturally like other words...they're just not in my swear vocabulary. The "C" and the "P" words...referring to female anatomy....they're just gross, and sound gross when said.

 

[denice]

I do swear. I wasn't raised that way; my parents didn't swear or use substitute words. My parents thought that swearing was a sign of lower class people with a limited vocabulary. I went into the military and I got pretty bad for swearing. I am not as bad as I was in the military but I do swear. I always thought the substitute words were funny.

 

[Lari]

I swear, which is probably not good with a toddler in the house.

 

[Arya Underfoot]

After reading Irvine Welsh novels I became very accustomed to swearing, sometimes in a Scottish accent. I do occasionally like to use substitutes like fudge, bugger or crap.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I do not swear. My kids are barely aware there are swear words because they just don’t hear them unless its in movie and we don’t watch ones that go overboard. I try to teach them that the words we speak are important. Say what you mean and move on. Speak life giving words.

 

[Margot Lane]

I don’t swear in the normal way. Grew up reading everything from Pogo (“Dagummit!”) to Shakespeare (“Where gotst thou that goose look, thou cream faced loon?”). The regular ones just don’t come —out.

 

[susanm9006]

I swear but only to myself and out of earshot of others.

 

[neely]

Add me to the list of people whose parents never used a swear word except maybe hell and even then that was very limited. Fast forward to when I got married - my husband said he never swore until he went away to college or at least that's his excuse. Hearing him swear I started to start doing the same. However, I never do it in public, at work or with people I don't know. I'm always amazed when I do swear with someone I know and they look at me and say, "I never heard you swear before." I'm surprised Carleton doesn't respond do my husband and I swearing. I wonder what swear words he would use.

 

[NY cat man]

I was a sailor, and some of those guys could peel paint with their invective, and conjure up new curses on the fly. I choose not to, though; I find it to be too limiting and too repetitive. Even the F- bombs have lost their sting from overuse, so what's the point?

 

[MonaLyssa33]

I swear A LOT. I tone it down a bit when I'm around my nieces (but only a little bit), but I will tone it down even more with other people's kids because I already know my sister doesn't care if people swear in front of her kids, but other people aren't as lenient as my sister.

 

[lizzie]

I do swear some,but draw the line at certain words.

 

[catloverfromwayback]

I used not to swear much, until my last job, where the F word was dropped all the time (indeed my boss warned me it was a very sweary place when he interviewed me). In the nearly twenty years since I started there I’ve sworn a lot - not a range of words, and there are some I will not use. I just drop the F word a lot now, thou not around strangers or people I don’t know well. Australia has a reputation as a fairly sweary country. It certainly doesn’t go by age here. I’ve never heard my mother swear, but people in the retirement village do (at least when they know someone doesn’t mind it).

 

[catloverfromwayback]

I'm surprised Carleton doesn't respond do my husband and I swearing. I wonder what swear words he would use.

Probably “hiss” has all sorts of meanings we’re better off not knowing!

 

[aliceneko]

Big swearers in this house, and whole family.

 

[iPappy]

I swear quite a bit around people I know well, but people I don't know, not at all. One of my closest friends was the same way, we'd swear up a storm when it was just us or us and our circle of friends, laughing and carrying on and just being rowdy. But if anyone we didn't know well (or someone we knew well but did not swear) entered the room, we shut it off.
One of the biggest insults going around when I was a kid was "butt nugget" and I still find myself reverting to that sometimes.