As a remodeler I work with the homeowner/customer around me a lot. If I am alone and screw up like cut a piece too short, or whack myself with my hammer, I will say "Shit! or “you fucking dumbass!” talking about myself, but if they are around, it’s usually “Shiii…dagnabbit” or sometimes “Shit! Oh, excuse me ma’am!”
Usually the customer just grins and says “don’t worry about it”
Cheese 'n rice all muddy!
Knock the muddy knickers!
Mud 'n fog in Athabasca!
A Mudhole almost equal to the Great Serbonian Bog!
agraVAtion and BOther!
There’s a cartoon, Mafalda, which I thoroughly recommend to anybody trying to learn Spanish.
Quino did it for about ten years; at that point, he was told that the newspaper was in talks for US syndication so he “had” to change the humor to make it understandable for “Americans”. He said Mafalda is Argentinian or isn’t and stopped making the strip, but she has been resurrected for things like a UN booklet on Children’s Rights and similar stuff.
She’s a staple of Hispanic culture. My family sometimes uses an insult borrowed from her ("¡zanahoria!" or zanahorio in the male form, although it’s only the female form that means carrot and the male doesn’t really have any meaning). I once took part in a project with several people from all over the Americas and we would use references to Mafalda constantly - there’s situations that you can describe just by a punchline from one of her strips.
One such situation: quite a few of the “gringos” (no insult meant, but it simply feels wrong to use American when all those other people were from America too) had this notion that “everybody does things like this!” - like this being the only way they’d ever known, but simply because they’d never left Potatoville before that project; they’d be terribly surprised to find that theirs had been the only factory (out of over 100) to have done things that particualr way. The Mafalda strip?
Mafalda, who’s 7 or so by then, is walking down the street and sees her friend Miguelito, a year younger, lifting one thumb up and using it to play “hide the tower” with a distant building. She says “do you know why you see your thumb as being bigger?” and he replies with absolute certainty “of course! Because the thumb is mine!”
We referred to anybody who thought his way was the only physically possible way as a “thumb is mine”.
Usually I like to say “CURSES!”, with an exaggerated clenched fist, but this…
…is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. I can’t stop giggling every time I look at it. I’m gonna give it a go.
I saw an old war movie where they used “mother-lover” instead of “mother-fer". I have also called someone “momma’s boy” in situations where "mother-fer” would have been inappropriate, i.e. the classroom.
We’ve been calling people “hoopleheads” a lot lately in the Athena household.
And yes, we did just finish watching the second season of Deadwood. Why do you ask?
Pepper Mill says
Fudge-Nut Brownies!
although sometimes she slips and uses much saltier language.
I used to use nonsense syllables.
**Grelb!
Ork-Snobble Gleep!
**
I like “dagnabit” quite a bit. Makes me feel like an old prospector.
I frequently, without realizing it in the moment, say “sugar shack” instead of other, naughtier “S” words.
And I ALWAYS say “What the BEANS?!” instead of other dirtier versions.
Son of a basketball!
Usually when the kids are in the car I start doing my Yosemite Sam impersonation. “Garfar samaram rockafarcking nerferringer…”
It seems that the more upset I am the less likely I am to actually swear. For example, when I accidently formatted the wrong hard drive and thought that all my life’s work had been destroyed, what did I say? “Nut bunnies” :dubious:
My list:
Snikt
Shikt
Bamf (can you tell I used to read X-men?)
Droga (actually a bad word in Portaguese)
Nut Bunnies
Fudge Monkeys (Freakazoid)
Nut Monkeys
Fudge Bunnies
Baka
Aho (yes, I am studying Japanese)
And for shakespearan cursing:
You thrice-damned whoreson!
[steal] “Nut Bunnies”. [/steal]
My friend’s grandpa goes with “Good night nurse!”
Mine:
For fucking → farking
For shit → sugar
For asshole/bastard → stupid git
To curse myself out → gigi, you’re so silly!
When serious invective would fly otherwise → GRRRR!!!
But I will let “God Fucking Dammit” fly when I am alone and pissed. :o
I use “utterly” “stupid” and especially “Bucket.” But it’s the way I say them (You Stupid Bucket).
I also answer stupid questions “Of course” or “Of course not.”
cod
cod flabbit
cod dangit
cheeses (or cheezuz)
cripes
forking, farking, frapping, frigging
rassinfrassin
sheep, sheet (often preceeded by “holy”)
carp
I use these because I like swearing semi-creatively, and because it keeps my three-year-old daughter from saying, “Mommy, shit’s a bad word!”
My epithet of choice right now is “balls.” As in, something bad happens, and I say, “oh, balls.”
But when I am in polite company, I honor the sensitivity of the situation and say “testicles.”
This, friends, has got to be on the top 20 list of reasons why I didn’t breed. I NEED to swear properly, or my head will explode.
Occasionally, when in polite company, I will say, “Godblessit.” I picked that up from my cousin 25 years ago, and haven’t forgotten it. I always feel stupid saying it, though, because, I’m an agnostic with a couple of really super-rabid athiest friends, and I avoid saying it around them, because I get the eyebrow. :dubious:
Weird how invoking the name of God is worse than the “F” word in some circles, huh?
Jeez, works sometimes. Jeezly Crow…
Nah. Mostly I need to say it right. I’d perish if I had to curb my language at home for children. It’s bad enough that I have to do it outside the house. I don’t want to be thought of as an ill mannered barbarian. 
At work, I’m frequently heard moaning “Oh, crumbs.”
When I was little my father used to say “bloomin’” this and that. Which I never understood…I thought he was saying “blueman.”
I had a friend who used to say:
Oh…piffle!
I’m not sure I can pull that one off, though.