Swearing indicates a limited vocabulary, right? Some say swearing shows a result of a lack of education, laziness or impulsiveness. We’re vulgarians, lower on socio-intellectual status, less effective at our jobs and less friendly. Is any of this true? Studies – there are always studies – suggest actually the more you swear the more comprehensive your vocabulary actually is. Well, this study does, anyway. As someone who swears far too fucking much – I once apologised by saying ‘SHIT!” out loud when I visited a mosque and forgot to remove my shoes: “God, sorry,” I unfortunately added – I was thrilled to discover that YouGov had done an opinion poll on the most common swear words used in the USA USA USA, Australia and the UK. What a gloriously pointless thing to do. The results are in …
I love the last bit, That 90% of American, 91% of Australians and 94% of British respondents were happy to answer questions that contained swear words. Presumably, the rest told YouGov to fuck off?
I am very fond of many of these words, using all the words from the first four lines, with the possible exception of ‘motherfucker’, which brings to mind some form of incest which I do not wish to think about. I do not use ‘pussy’, apart from in the double etendre ‘looking at you stroking your pussy’ context, nor ‘son of a bitch, jerk, heck or douchebag. As YouGov points out, these are terms employed mainly by a minority of our American cousins.
I did not grow up in an environment where people swore a great deal. My mother was prone to using the odd ‘shit’, but my paternal grandparents thought swearing to be a terrible sin. Indeed, I remember as a kid saying ‘Blimey!’, literally meaning ‘blind me’, upon which my grandmother replied: ‘don’t say that or God will strike you blind!’ They weren’t even a particularly religious family so I suspect they were trying to put the fear of God up me so I might avoid swearing in future. As I struck out into the real world, swearing went from being a bit of a novelty to becoming an integral part of my vocabulary. It’s been that way ever since.
I am particularly proud that ‘fuck’ is our favourite swear word, with 67% of Brits using it, whereas the Aussies’ favourite word is the somewhat tame ‘shit’ (61%) and USA USA USA have the somewhat limp ‘damn’ (55%).
We’re also top on shit, twat, bollocks, wanker, dick, piss, prick, balls, cock and, even more impressively, cunt. You get all these people putting our country down, but when it comes to swearing, we’re still at the top of the tree. Proud to be British? Fuck yeah.
I love swearing. Not just when I swear but when others do, people like comedians. The greatest comedian of them all, Billy Connolly, turned swearing in general and fuck in particular into an art form. And few blokes have a better vocabulary than The Big Yin.
What does this all prove? Bugger all. Part of swearing is sheer devilment of it, the rest, I don’t really know. I probably need to think more about swearing because sometimes I probably use expletives in places where maybe I shouldn’t, like in places of worship, just in case God is a bit of a snowflake. Sometimes, you just can’t help it, so why bother to help it? If you shout “Shit!” about something, it probably is.
