All this cussing and no Québécois??
For the benefit of any who may not have yet been exposed to it, Québécois cursing (called sacre, from sacré, “sacred”) is basically strings of Catholic liturgical terms concatenated with “de.” The most common ones are crisse (Christ, “Christ”), osti, esti or even sti (hostie, “communion wafer”), câlisse (calice, “chalice”), and tabarnac (tabernacle, “tabernacle”), along with ciboâre (ciboire, “pyx”), sacrament (sacrement, “sacrament”), and viarge (vierge, “Virgin”).
For example:
Mon osti de saint-sacrament de criss de câlisse de tabarnac !
Or:
Crisse-moé patience, bout de viarge ! (“Leave me the fuck alone, for Chrissakes!”; literally, “Christ me patience, bit of virgin!”)
Anything noun can be intensified with the prepositional phrase osti de (Mon osti de char est fucké, “my goddamn car is broken down.”) And crisser, as seen above, is an all-purpose verb: y m’a crissé une claque dans’ face, “he whacked me in the face,” literally, “he Christed me a smack in the face.”
And of course there are innumerable fuddle-duddle-style euphemisms for the big ones: tabarnouche, tabarslaque, tabarouette, simonac, cibollaque, câlique, câline, câline de bine, and so forth.
Osti is so common that just the consonant cluster /sts/ (with the characteristic Québécois affrication) is useful as an expression of irritation, much as one might cluck the tongue or growl in the back of the throat.
Never underestimate the power of sacre. Anglophones and people from Europe tend to think of sacre as somehow cute or funny, until they’re on the receiving end of a particularly vicious blast. One major difference between France French and Québécois, IMHO, is that you can seriously get mad in Québécois.
