I swear all the time but also very rarely in what I’d call an aggressive way. I don’t swear at people I’m talking to for instance, just around them about other things. I swear when I’m annoyed with something or dislike it, even mildly.
So I tend not to swear around my family but only because I’m rarely annoyed around them. I never swear in front of children. I usually watch myself in front of new interns for a few weeks until they realize I’m a nice boss and I don’t think they’ll find it alarming. Permanent new hires I expect to be adults and grow the fuck up from day 1, so I don’t censor myself with them.
My all time favorite profanity is from a scene where Tony Soprano is angry that someone is questioning him so he yells, “Because I’m the mother fucking fucking boss”. At first glance it looks like he repeated ‘fucking’ for no reason, but on closer inspection it’s clear that ‘mother fucking’ modifies ‘fucking’ which modifies ‘boss’. What type of fucking boss is he? The mother fucking fucking boss. Brilliant.
Whenever possible. I really have a filthy mouth. I have an aesthetic appreciation for curse words… I think one of my favorite words on the planet is ‘‘fuck’’ for example. It’s so versatile, and so visceral. I also like religious epithets like goddamn and Jesus Christ and so on. But I don’t do it to offend anyone, I rarely curse in public (only on accident) and I wouldn’t do it if in front of someone who asked me not to.
I don’t do it to piss people off. I do it because it’s aesthetically pleasing.
I taught my husband to swear. He’s pretty good at doing it casually now, but when he gets angry it’s hard not to laugh at his inept attempt to use cursewords. He thinks you can just throw a bunch of swear words together to create a tirade, he doesn’t realize there’s an art to it.
It depends on my surroundings.
At the lab, we all swear and it becomes background chatter.
At my pub, I usually don’t swear because there are children present usually.
In private company with my friends, I swear.
Around my spousal-unit, I limit my swearing because it upsets her (delicate southern blossom that she is).
That also applies to my maternal-unit.
I am new here, and I was wondering if Curtis Lemay often starts this kind of thread without further interaction.
Almost never. Enough that my co-workers have commented on it and that on the rare occasion when I use it around the kids they all get the startled puppy look and start walking on eggshells. If I start cursing it’s because I’m really, REALLY, fed up with something.
I try so hard not to, but one still slips out occasionally. Hubby curses a lot. I’m used to it, and the kids will look at each other and say, “Don’t repeat that!”
I use what vocabulary I have whenever/wherever appropriate. Sometimes “fuck” is the perfect word for a situation. Sometimes “cuntlapping whore” fits and works. Then there are times that “fortuitous” is the proper term.
Frequently. Constantly. All the time. In every language I speak. I have astonished friends-of-friends, who are in the same relative age and social strata as I am–early twenties and broke. Apparently they do not find it as appealing to curse as I do. A LOT. Voluminously.
I don’t care to use religious epithets in English, though, so all my English cursing is more filthy. In French, though, all bets are off. In Quebecois French, pretty much all the cursing is religiously-based, which is why one time when I was on the metro and I dropped a twelve-pack of Diet Coke and the top burst off and sent cans of Coke scattering around the train and I bit my tongue, I bit it hard, and then I could help it as I spluttered “Tabernac!!! Fucking piece of fucking tabernac fuck calisse fuck” under my breath as I scrambled over people and under seats to chase down my errant Diet Cokes and tried desperately not to lose any of my other groceries–anyway, as this was happening, the elderly ladies on the train were tutting to themselves and tsking and…yes. And as for cursing in Russian, all bets are off.
It varies a lot for me. At work I don’t swear unless I’m super-frustrated or making a joke, even though no one cares how much I do it. At home it’s the same. When I’m playing Warcraft and am on Ventrilo, however, I swear like a sailor with Tourette’s.
I also swear a LOT when I’m really frustrated, to the point that my speech degrades into almost entirely swearing. It’s like Ralphie’s dad in A Christmas Story.
Yeah, all the fucking time. I don’t know if the results go into a notebook he keeps under his bed or if he just likes to read about how morally inferior we all are, but either way, he doesn’t usually participate in his own threads unless asked a specific question.
It’s funny how profanity works in other languages. I don’t use it in Spanish because while I generally understand the degree of offense of certain words, unless you’re a native speaker you really never know. I know that pendejo is kind of a mild curse meaning ‘‘jackass’’, and puta is about the offense equivalent of ‘‘bitch’’, and that anything involving someone’s mother is the worst insult imaginable. Also, the words for ‘‘fuck,’’ chingar and joder, are actually more like ‘‘screw.’’ One of my favorite favorite Spanish expressions is ‘‘O te chingas o te jodes’’ which means, ‘‘Either you screw or you’re fucked.’’ Even leaving aside the meaning behind it, it has a beautiful ring to it.
I have a friend who is from Taiwan, and I don’t think Mandarin curse words are associated with the same degree of offense as English ones are in the United States. I’m guessing this is the case because one of her academic papers, which I was editing for her, contained the mangled expression ‘‘What is the hell?’’ I had to explain to her that there are certain contexts where you really can’t use expressions like that. Academic writing would be one of them.
It’s pretty much my native tongue. I remember when “Deadwood” started airing, and people were stunned at the language. My husband and I literally didn’t even notice anything at all. We were like–WTF–these CS MF are offended? I do make it a point to refrain from cursing in front of my mother, though. I’ve heard her say “damn” probably 3 times in my life.
I try to tone it down in the office because people are on the phone with clients. This has led to me saying “oh mercy” on a regular basis and seems to annoy my coworkers more than when I say something like “for the love of fuck”. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t I guess.