Bad words in odd places

Cursing can be cured but it ain’t %$%#-ing easy

A TEXT MESSAGE appeared on my phone:

“Bleep. I got a bleeping new job talking on the bleeping radio. I need help bleeping quickly.”

That’s the censored version. You see the problem? This friend, whom I shall call Jenny Bleep, cannot limit her vocabulary to un-spicy language. Legend has it that she did not cry at birth, but shot out with a bump and a curse. I could not see her surviving five minutes on live radio.

*
Cursing is in the news at the moment. Families in the US are complaining about a music CD handed out to children by McDonalds. They didn’t moan for the obvious reason, that it was mindless pop drivel, but because it had a BAD WORD in it.

McDonald’s replied that the song merely contained the term “looking around”, which is not illegal anywhere, except possibly in Myanmar, where visitors who look around too energetically will cause an extra five years to be added to Aung San Suu Kyu’s sentence.

But I’ve listened to the Kidz Bop track (it’s called “I Don’t Want to Be”), and the singer definitely isn’t singing “looking around”. Unless the correct pronunciation of that phrase begins with an “F” sound. Perhaps it’s a regional variant?

Click here and listen to the words at 0.52 seconds

But McDonald’s needn’t worry. The CD, which was of no interest before this incident, is now in massive demand from youngsters. It’s still rubbish, but now it’s rubbish adults don’t want them to listen to.

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If Jenny lived in America, I would send her to the Cuss Control Academy. This organization, which really exists, turns foul-mouthed people into sweet-talkers you can introduce to children (who can then teach them the latest curse words fresh from the playground).

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Psychologists say the first step in cleaning your tongue is to replace swear words with innocent ones. Top science fiction writer Larry Niven makes his characters exclaim “Tanj!” (derived from “there ain’t no justice”) when bad things happen. This would be a brilliant idea except for the fact that it makes everyone sound really silly.

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In the US TV show Firefly, actors use real swear words, but only in Mandarin and Cantonese. This is a dumb idea. You do NOT want to get 1.3 billion people writing angry letters to your boss.

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An article going around the internet proposes new swear words such as zighumple or jizzlewax. I couldn’t recommend that Jenny use these. They are naff-sounding and unsatisfying. No, good swear words need to be sharp, hard-edged sounds which erupt from your mouth the second someone treads on your foot.

In the end, we sat down and worked out a huge list of possible words that sounded like curse words but were safe for broadcasting use. Jenny took the list away to try them out for a few days. She came back with some fascinating discoveries. The top three most satisfying broadcast-friendly non-curse words, in reverse order, were:

3. Pool

2. Cow and

1. Follicle.

I tried them myself. You know what? They really work. The next time something bad happens, shout COW or POOL at the top of your voice. You actually do feel better. And when something really, really bad happens, slam your first into your desk and shout FOLLICLE. It feels great.

And it’s meaningless enough even for the next McDonald’s “Kidz Bop” music CD.

 

Technorati Tags: new curse words,new profanities,new bad language,kidz bop

Comments

[Jason]

Didn't you watch the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica? Where the universal FRACK! was a less than subtle substitute for our favourite f-bomb, to get it on puritanical U.S. airwaves.

[Nury]

Interesting, thanks, Jason.

But I think "frack" is too obviously a substitute for the word it replaces. I prefer cow and follicle, which are more subtle.

I think subtle ones are more likely to survive. Consider "what the dickens" which is a substitute for "what the devil".

Also "follicle" has a bit of length to it, which makes it more satisfying than normal swear words.

[sej (aka Jason - aarrgghh there's two of us!!)]

"Horse/Cow Manure" or "son of a cactus" are a couple of my favorites.

[Mira]

I used to wonder why movies in English would come with English subtitles. Perhaps the subtitles were added for deaf viewers, or for those who had difficulty understanding spoken English in a particular dialect. However, one thing I learnt from those movies was that when someone cursed, the subtitle wouldn't contain the exact curse word. For example, "sh*t" would be written as "crap", "f***" would be as diverse as "darn" and so on. The words lose value getting censored. We cursers know deep down that there are no subsitutes good enough for those words. They're just too d**m good!

[Dancer]

I once watched a Chinese movie littered with swear words with a Chinese friend. Not speaking Chinese myself, I relied on the English subtitles. It turns out I was more confused than be repulsed. The subtitles of the any swearing becomes: ABCDABCDABCD...

[Vaibhav]

I should bring attention to a certain Captain whose a friend of a Belgian reporter in a popular comic book.
The swear words used are hilarious
Vegetarian, Ectoplasm, Bashi Bazouks, Bucaneer, Scally Wag, Blistering Barnacles, Aborigine, Anthracite, Kleptomaniac, etc.
To name but a few.

[Angela]

Blistering barnacles! I believe I do know this Captain and his teen-age reporter friend. The Captain is very fond of whisky. There is a website containing his expletives:

http://www.tintinologist.org/guides/lists/curses.html

[Dan Kubiske]

At first I couldn't believe what I was hearing on Firefly but then I realized I was translating the Chinese automatically. Bizarre.

And let us not forget some goodies from the TV series MASH: Road Apples and Horse Hockey for what a horse leaves along a parade route.

[TS]

Pants! I'll have to come out of the closet and declare that I am a nerd!

Larry Niven is my all time favourite science fiction author. Other than Tanj, which is used widely in the nerd Sci-Fi community, he also often use the words "bleep" and "censor" in place of curse words.
He doesn't use these curse replacements because he's a softie that flinches when he hear bad words, it's his take on how language constantly change to get around taboos that prevent us from venting our frustrations.
If someone want read something by Larry Niven, then his novel Ringworld or his short story collection Neutron Star are both a good place to start. Most of his stories takes place in a universe called Known Space, all books and stories can be read stand-alone but are all part of a larger picture.

@Jason: The word used in Battlestar Galactica is actually "frag" and it was also used in the original series back in the late 70's (yes I'm that old). Admittedly they use the word as a TV censor rule friendly substitute for THAT word, but it wasn't invented by the writers of the show, the word has its roots in US military slang from the Vietnam war where it meant: "to kill an unpopular person on your own side".

Firefly was the most underrated Sci-Fi show when it was on TV and was cancelled after only 14 episodes.
It has a cult following (we call ourselves Browncoats) so big that it borders on mainstream. In fact the popularity was so great that a sequel movie "Serenity" was made. I recommend buying the DVDs or Blu-Rays Don't bother renting them, you'll end up having to buy them later :-).

In the English TV show Blackadder there's also some very inventive curses like "Trucking Tanker" or "Clucking Bell". I have gotten into a habit of using these expressions and they always raise a smile.

[Santox]

Curse words, swear words or the like over TV channels in KL are taken off the air and replaced with a 'tut...' high pitch sound which sets the viewers to imaginative high. My colleaque has somehow been infected with this sound, also punctuates his conversation in the office with his version of 'tut...' ,sounding like a toad in despair.

[Chamin]

I and and several other first-year undergrads of my batch rented a house near the university. Soon, the neighbors were complaining about the large number of loud curses coming out of the house. Since whispering these words completely destroys the mood, we took two measures:

a. Using substitute words

b. Imposing a fine, which was collected in a piggy bank.

There were occasions one of us lost temper, put some money in the piggy bank and started cursing. At the end of the year, the piggy bank was full.

Now it feels weird, but at the time those words were common and essential vocabulary :-p.

[Chamin]

Sorry about multiple post, but i cant't resist mentioning that tobaiti and bleep has one common property; they both can be used in place of many words.

Can somebody write a poem with only these two words and a few articles?

[farah]

i second Charmin. slangs have practically become a part of everyday vocabulary. if it had to be censored then it would sound something like:
"i (tut) went to (tut tut) place only to have (tut) meet (tut tut) (and several more *tuts* later) my friend who was (tut) ten minutes late. what a (tut)!"
btw the word tut itself is a slang in our native language.

[Nury]

Hey, TS, I am a Larry Niven fan too. It's wonderful to get immersed in a really imaginative book.

Did you ever read the one where there's a base on a new planet and some strange monster is picking off the pioneers one by one? I can't remember the title but I recall being utterly gripped by the story.

People who don't read books have no idea what they're missing

[TS]

Nury, it sounds like The Legacy of Heorot.
I haven't read that book for years, I should have a copy of it in storage back home in Australia.

[Uli Dernbach-Steffl]

TS: being a great fan of the Blackadder-series, too, I can truly recommend the swear imaginative swear words used...
like "gulping gargoyles" for instance.
I recommend substituting "sugar" for "sh*t". Or you might use Plumpaquatsch, although the elderly Germans will remember this word as a name for a green froglike creature in a children's TV series of the early seventies and yes, I am that old :-)

[TS]

Uli: I recently worked on a project with a big boisterous bloke, he would command everybody around with his deep loud voice calling us all Darling :-)

P.S. Can anyone tell me the grammar rules for a smiley? If you put it at the end of a sentence, can you then leave out the punctuation?

[sej]

Here's a question... let's say everyone, and I mean everyone, all of a sudden uses "sugar" as a replacement for "sh*t"... does "sugar" then become the swear word, and do we then need to do something about it in the way we did something with "sh*t"?

Along the same lines but in reverse, if everyone, and again, I mean everyone, starts using "sh*t", does it lose its potency?

The upshot being, should we bother trying to change the words we use, or just let nature take its course? And if we do try to change the language, are we actually trying to change something very fundamental as to who we are? Can the English language still be (called) English? Can Cantonese still be Cantonese? Can Sinhala still remain Sinhala, Tamil remain Tamil, etc?

TS: I think emoticons use is too new with too many variations on the way they're used to worry about how they integrate with punctuation.

TS: I remember dealing with a customer on the phone, and she used to refer to everyone as "Tiger".... "Thanks Tiger" she'd say at the end of the call... Man (expletive modified) I hate that!

[Jason]

Sadly, I went to a Baptist school for 2 years, where one teacher taught us to say:

Sugar and Fudge instead of, well you get the idea.

[Uli Dernbach-Steffl, Germany]

Jason: Oooh, I like "fudge" very much, and it is much better for the teeth and the figure when you're just saying it than actually eating it !
TS: "Darling" is great ;-)))
I really do not know about grammar, really, I simply find that punctuation after a smiley looks awkward... So I just take my poersonal liberty to omit it...

[Rika]

Doesn't this whole discussion show how much humankind needs swearing? Interesting that even with the replacement words everybody knows that it is swearing - given context and tone - just that with the wrong word it becomes offensive. BTW: Who does decide what is offensive and what not?

People are very, very strange and are so desperately trying to hide their hormon driven animal ancestry.

Let's admit it: The blanket of human civilisation is d**n thin.

Sometimes I imagine some divine creature sitting on a cloud observing mankind the way adults look at teenagers and thinking: Oh look at them, and they think they know how life works! Bless...

[dul]

hey! its DOES work!
i tried out cow and pool a couple of times!!!
wanted to try out follicle but just ended up trying to remember the word... needs a bit of practising.. lol!

[Taylor]

I am suprised that no-one has mentioned the swearword invented by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for their TV show and book "Red Dwarf". They used the word "smeg" to replace just about all swear words.

Eg:
"What the smeg is that?"
"just smegging brilliant"
"thats complete smeg..."
etc.

[Nury]

Smeg is a good addition, thanks Taylor.

I'd also like to add "stack" used by Maurice Gleitzman in his books about the adventures of toads ("Toad Rage" etc). "Stack you," he said. "Well, I'll be stacked."

This has two special elements. First, it was used in a children's book, which is clever and shocking -- yet sneaks past the censorship dept in the school library.

Second, it has a powerful meaning (which is vital for a swear word). It refers to death by being crushed on a road by a motor vehicle: highly relevant for a community of toads which lives next to a highway.

Smeg is all right, but it sounds too charming. It is reminiscent of the name Meg, which suggests a sweet girl, and smug, which is a cosy, self-satisfied smiley feeling, and snog, which means prolonged kissing session.

"Frag" is more powerful for various reasons. It is a four letter word, it begins with f, and it is reminscient of fragments, as in "being blown to bits".

I think "follicle" works because it uses lots of sounds that are in swear words, but re-jigged in an order which makes them harmless.

[Jan]

Long ago my [then] small nephew was so frustrated he used the worst words he could conjure up in his 8-year-old's mind : "oh, Cruella DeVille!" and he said them with conviction.
- and yes, he was a keen reader, Nury!