Cursing is the Tabasco Sauce of Life.
Unnecessary and over-rated?
StG
I curse occasionally, when the situation merits the use of the word for one reason or another, but I don’t fucking say fucking every other fucking word. (See - there wasn’t one between “every” and “other”.) I use words when they are the right words to convey what I am trying to express. That goes for “fuck” the same way as it does for any other word.
I’m also actively annoyed by people who think curse words are eeeevil. They’re just words, dammit. They have meaning, and that meaning may convey something you don’t like - that you are a terrible person, perhaps. It’s okay not to want to be called a terrible person. But just hearing the word? Many swear words don’t hurt or slander anyone but their target. There are some that do - “bitch” is specifically a slur against women, and should be avoided. But “Shit”? “Damn”? “Fuck”? “Hell”? These hurt nobody. If you’re offended by the mere utterance of them I think you’re a dipshit and I hate you.
Years ago, back when I was a brand new division officer in the Navy, I remember being woken up in the middle of the night on my submarine because of an out-of-commission motor generator set. (I was the Electrical Officer.) The Chief [Petty Officer] electrician (who reported to me) described it as such: “The fucking commutator ring segments shit the bed, and took out all of the fucking brushes…” [Or something like that. This was a long time ago.]
Anyway, it was the middle of the night, and I proceeded to give a report to my boss, the Chief Engineer, just like that, complete with f-bombs. The Engineer, who was a regular-Joe type didn’t bat an eye, but just told me to go wake up the CO (commanding officer) and give him the same report. Note that the CO was decidedly not a regular-Joe type.
Still half-asleep, I did as ordered, woke up the CO, and started to give my report: “Well, sir, the fucking commutator ring segments shit the bed—er, I mean the commutator ring segments…uh…fractured and…”
I curse fairly often. But I don’t curse at work, I don’t curse while out and about where little kids and old ladies can be scandalized. I also don’t swear at people.
I do get irritated when others have lower standards than mine, especially when someone drops an f bomb in a work meeting with outside collaborators. And I don’t want to be sworn at.
I usually don’t curse. When I was in the Marines we fuckin’ cursed all the fuckin’ time. It doesn’t bother me if someone curses.
One of the ugliest words is the C word.
A favorite movie is My Cousin Vinny. Best seen uncut. The jail scene when Vinny first shows up isn’t very funny when the F bombs are cut out. Here it is, uncut, with the F bombs — My Cousin Vinny (1/5) Movie CLIP - The Wrong Idea (1992) HD - YouTube.
Agreed.
One more thing. I wouldn’t let my kids curse when they were teenagers. I wouldn’t even let them say shutup to each other, so cursing was definitely out of the question. Now they’re in their 30s and one of them occasionally swears, and I don’t mind it and I don’t call it out.
I must admit that by cursing I meant bad words as I understood them. I didn’t want to get into racial slurs or anything like that.
The B word and C word slipped my mind.
I use them regularly when I’m sure of all who will hear them and the context calls for them. But here on SDMB, even though they’re allowed, I am considerate of the many readers whom they might offend, and may have just cursed a couple of times.
Continual swearing spilling out like water dilutes its power. It has a purpose, and it loses its impact when its not kept to those purposes.
I grew up being taught the maxim that if you cussed overly much, or not in the heat of the moment, that it was a sign that you were inarticulate and couldn’t come up with a better way to say something.
That said, I don’t use too much profanity. I can, I just generally don’t. To the point where about a year ago at work I got wound up about something, and let loose with a F-bomb. Most of my co-workers were amazed- in nearly 3 years of work, they’d never heard me say anything profane.
Do I get bothered by it? Not in the least. I grew up with fathers and grandfathers who had been NCOs in the military, had a slew of sports coaches from the South, and have worked with a lot of ex-military types over the years. Profanity is just sort of the background- some people do it, and some don’t. I don’t get worked up about it either way.
I rarely swear but I’m never offended by the words themselves. No single word in and of itself has magical powers to offend me it is always the intent behind it that matters. I can however be offended without a single identifiable profanity being used.
I’m not a fan of over-use by others, that just gets boring.
“Exclamation not punctuation” is a pretty good rule of usage or “always have a cunt up your sleeve” as me and my wife would have it.
(she famously referred to “deal or no deal” with Noel Edmonds as “guessing with a cunt”, classic swearing that the UK members of the board will fully endorse I’m sure)
From the other side of the coin, here in Switzerland I’m still a bit surprised to hear 8 year olds using “shit” as a normal part of their vocabulary and dropping F-bombs. Doesn’t bother the parents at all. Most native English speakers don’t want their 8 year olds cursing and often don’t consider swearing to be their best behavior.
One of my Swiss coworkers averages a “shit” per hour, every day, in an office environment. Another coworker from New Zealand mentioned she thought it was a bit excessive for the office.
This is me. You won’t hear me swearing unless there’s something really wrong. I will use both “shit” and “fuck” to describe certain actions.
I was getting ready to tell someone off for apologizing every time he said “fuck” in my presence. Because he only did it for me, and not for others. And since I am a woman, I could twist it as him treating men and women differently. He would laugh (he’s not Swiss). But we stopped having meetings in person, and some things just don’t work as well for phone meetings.
WTF? Words can mean different things in different contexts.
I hardly ever curse, especially if anyone is with me. And at most, I’ll say “hell” or “damn.”
But I don’t care if other people curse.
It’s a great movie, but that scene is cringy as hell, making comedy out of a man’s fear that he’s about to be raped. Imagine a woman in that scenario. Still funny?
Although it’s a great illustrative example of how fuck means different things in different contexts.
I missed this. Fuck means a lot of different things which is why it’s so glorious. Context, context, context. It almost never means rape in the literal sense. It’s not like “fuck you” means “I wanna rape you.” When we call someone a dumb fuck we’re not saying he’s a rapist. Fuck off is related to rape… how? Go fuck yourself. Go rape yourself? I fucked up. That’s cool as fuck. Look at that little fucker go. Fuck yeah. Let’s get fucked up. I’m not seeing the rape connection in any of these examples. Even used in its classic form, “Let’s fuck,” rape is not implied. It reminds me of those old-school feminists who think all penetrative sex is rape. It’s just sex. Enthusiastic sex. Let the people fuck.
Excuse me. Old school feminist here and that is not what all of us think.
I’m not well educated on the history of feminism. I’m thinking of a certain author whose name escapes me.
I think she wrote The Feminine Mystique. Betty Frieden? But could totally be wrong.
Can I mention how irritated I am that I got a degree in social work and there were zero classes on critical gender studies? I should know this stuff.
Yeah, fuck is arguably english’s most useful and flexible word, becuase it and its variants are english’s only infix: absofuckinglutely.
But yeah, as to it’s meaning:
Sometimes it means sex, but only if that’s clear from context.
Sometimes it means ‘generic bad word’, but only if that’s what the tone of the phrase implies.
And often it’s just a generic intensifier. Fuck yeah!
It never has an implication of rape, so far as I know. Maybe there’s an implication that it will be particularly enthusiastic sex, but nothing about consent is directly implied, as far as I’ve noticed.
I don’t swear as much as I used to. For one thing, I’m calmer now. I’ve known people that seemed to know only one adjective/adverb, fuckin’. I don’t know if they were stupid as mud, or they had switched off the part of the brain that knew more interesting words. I realized just how boring I was when I swore a lot.
Nobody remembers it when you yell, “Fuck this shit!” If you bellow, “Rat bites,” though, you’ve made an impression.