That’s the question. For instance, th young woman at the video store 15 years ago who commented that the language in whatever movei it was was strong “But not GD all the tim eor anything.” I know it’s one of the Commandments, but I say it all the time. But then I have a potty mouth.
“G-d D-- it” worse than “pigfucker” etc?
I say no, but I’m not always in touch with what “the people” think.
I regard it as one of the milder true profanities. Those who are very religious may consider it to be more offensive, as it is one that more directly violates that whole “taking the Lord’s name in vain” thing.
I would assume that she meant it had a lot of ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ and that her personal comfort level stopped there. I think the profanity heirarchy, in terms of general reaction, in the States is something like:
hell
damn
goddamn
bitch
shit
fuck
motherfucker
cocksucker
cunt
I bet the clerk would pass out if a movie went above level five or so.
I can’t be the only one who thought this was going to be some kind of commentary on Great Debates.
Ensign Edison’s profanity chart looks right on- very well thought out! GD is only considered the worst by religious fanatics. In the US anyway (I know cunt is used differently and more frequently in UK), I would say almost everyone I know has said GD at some point, but it is only brave few who will throw out the dreaded cunt. I don’t know why this is- cunt is my favorite expletive- but I do know saying GD outloud at work for example, no one even bats an eye or looks up from their work, but toss out cunt and you get a lot more eye contact.
My family was a fairly profane blue-collar bunch, but GD was strictly off limits. I distinctly remember one of my siblings accidentally using that curse in front of my dear sweet mother who immediately slapped their mouth shouting “Don’t you dare fucking say that!” :rolleyes:
In my opinion, “Faggot” and the “n” word are the most offensive. GD doesn’t even come close to those.
My favorite - Jesus fuck! - seems to quite a reaction out of many people.
Oh yeah, the n-word is a whole other dimension of being completely unacceptable in most circumstances, but it’s a special case in a few ways so I’m not sure it belongs with ‘general obscenities’. Sadly, I don’t think many people think ‘faggot’ is all that bad…unless it’s directed at them, of course. I would put it near ‘bitch’ on my little list.
Fucking your mother is more acceptible than sucking a cock?? I’m concerned about your social life :dubious:
Anyway GD (and yes I did think this was about Great Debates) really should be the worst profanity, given that it’s, as noted, the one metioned in the Ten Commandments. And people make some kind of religious case for not saying certain words when the Bible doesn’t say a fucking thing about that shit.
Well, bugger that.
Crazy, right? But you know, I think it just may be. Curious to see others’ take on this. Incest is more taboo that homosexuality (I’ve never heard a woman called a cocksucker as an insult) these days, but it seems like m-fucker is slung about much more casually than c-sucker. Nobody is really saying you have intercourse with your mother, but a lot of the time, they are really implying that you’d take it in the face. M-f is just a little too silly to be worse than c-s, because most guys don’t have a secret inner fear of wanting to fuck their…wait. Okay, that’s not helping my point. Uh…Because most guys don’t have a compulsion to prove that they don’t want to fuck their mothers, where a lot of straight ones kind of do feel a need to make sure nobody ever thinks they suck cock, how’s that. 
In one sense, the Worst Profanity is whichever the people who hear you say it would find most offensive. And I’d also factor in how offensive you mean for it to be when you say it.
Taken completely literally, if you’re asking God to damn something or someone, you’re wishing probably the worst thing possible on them. If you’re using the word “God-damned” as an adjective, that’s something different: you’re saying that they already have been damned by God. I guess then it would be an expression of contempt or extreme disapproval.
Of course, most people who say some variation of “God damn” aren’t even thinking of the literal meaning. Which is a problem from some religious perspectives: divine names/titles becoming menaningless through thoughtless misuse.
Well, it’s the one and only profanity I won’t use.
I’m not a practicing Catholic any longer, but some old habits die hard. I suppose I just look at it as "there’s a million ways to express the idea of Oh, fucking hell!, so why not use one that isn’t a mortal sin.
<shrug>
Oh, Belgium, man!
No, you weren’t. And it made the OP terribly confusing for awhile.
For the most part, the chart provided rings true.
It’s really the situation that determines what’s the most profane.
You can say “god damn it” in church and someone will look at you crazy for a second. If you say “cunt” or “goat felching whore fucker” in the same place, you’ll get a nastier look.
Of course, then you’ll have to blame it on the kid next to you.
I was trying to think of a major movie where a character uses the word “cunt”- the only one I can come up with right now is Mena Suvari saying it in American Beauty (I remember finding it very sexy). You hear G-D twenty times per R-rated film, so by this logic, I would say cunt is deemd to be much worse. I think the MPAA says one “cunt” is an automatic R-rating, I don’t think one G-D is automatic R, so if I am recalling my MPAA rulings correctly, they also feel cunt is much worse.
“GD”, Great Debates, God damn, I guess I forgot where I was. I spent 12 years in Catholic schools and I guess most of it never has really stuck. I don’t ever remember specificallly being told to avoid that particular phrase. Other than, you know, the Commandments. But then, I did say it was Catholic so we weren’t reading a Bible or anything.
I’ll ty to be respectful of people’s wishes and avoid it if I know they are sensitive about it. But, for instance, a woman I worked with would talk on the phone and “shit” this and that,among a few other things, but say God damn and she’d be on your case. Of course, the Commandments don’t say anything about “shit” or “fuck”.
I swear far more than I should, and goddamn is one of those words I use too often. But it does get less use than the holy trinity of shit, fuck, and dammit.
However, my parents-in-law view it as absolutely unutterable (they were raised Southern Baptist. I was also raised a strict fundamentalist protestant, but it didn’t take). However, while my mother-in-law won’t say “Goddamn!” I did note, with much humor, that she’s more than capable of saying, “Jesus Fucking Christ.” Myself, I thought that second was much worse, but what do I know?
I always looked at it as a request rather than an insult. More of an angry and urgent prayer kind of thing. [Young Frankenstein] “Damn your eyes!” “Too late!” [/Young Frankenstein]