American here. I use “What the bloody hell?” regularly and it usually gets the furrowed-eyebrow-sideways-glance look. I never try to sound “British” and it’s a knee jerk reaction phrase that comes up in instances too great to number.
“Oy vey.” Not Jewish either. Kinda draw this one out. It gets a similar response but like the one above, I never do this for effect, it just seems to come out.
“Dag nabbit” Wife also adds in the full “Dag nabbit, Musky”. Both of us use it and garner puzzled reactions and then wonder why we have so few friends.
Unfortunately, it’s “motherfucker, cocksucker, tits!” I’m rarely around people who don’t already know me, so it’s okay. They expect no better. I am about to start some new classes, though, so I’ll have to try and tone it down. Maybe “mother-jumper, dog-lover, grits”?
“What the bloody hell?” is fake British anyway. “Bloody Hell!” as an exclamation, yes. “What the hell?” yes. Mashing them together? "A phrase from the great nation of American TV.
" ‘Huddup!’ said the parson. --Off went they." - from an Oliver Wendell Holmes poem, used when gathering up the family to leave. My wife uses “Come with me, I will make you a fisher of men.”
“Quo vadis, laddie?” - ‘where are you headed/what are you up to’ - from an old Asterix and Obelix comic. That line just stuck with me for some reason.
I use (perhaps overuse) Criminy, Jeezus Peezus, Great Horned Toad, Holy Smakeral, Jimminy Bananas, and Whamodyne. I am sure I use more than that. I am big on the expletives, both the standards and the variations I have generated myself. I love languange and like to swear so it is nice to have many versions. However there is my little mental list of vulgarities I do not use.
I also say “Bloody hell!”, but more often I will say “Blimey!”, in a voice reminiscent of Weebl. I once said the latter while on the phone with one of the vice presidents of my company, and was asked rather incredulously, “Did you just say blimey?”, and I had to rather sheepishly explain that yes I did, and it’s because of a stupid web cartoon.
I tend to say “Bloody hell!” as well, usually in periods of extreme frustration. I’ll also come out with the Kevin Smith-inspired statement that combines head-shaking lack of surprise with fatigue, sadness, and frustration: “Buncha savages in this town.”
If someone is crazy, they’re “out where the buses don’t run.”
Every so often, I’ll punctuate surprise with a Strong Bad-esque “Holy crap!”
I’ll use “Hooly Booly!” when I hear something remarkable.
(accent on the first syllable of each word…Hooo-ly Booo-ly. It just doesn’t work for me any other way)
I hate the phrase “really kinda” but find myself using it anyway. It’s really kinda stupid. It is really stupid or just kinda stupid? Hell, I dunno, both?
I also call people “crummy logheads” (taken from the game Baldur’s Gate) and “asshead annihilators” (taken from an April Fool’s issue of Game Informer).
I say “fuck in the face” where “it” is someting I’m unhappy with. I usually only use it when the thing in question doesn’t actually have a face. (i.e. “God damn… Rubik’s cube… fuck it! Fuck it in the face!”)
I’m also prone to say “poop in the pants” or “shit in the shower” (the latter of which was derived from this thread) to state that a situation or activity is no big deal or is something everyone does. (i.e. “It’s cool that you ate my cookies, I didn’t want them that much anyway. It’s just shit in the shower.”)
I nabbed one from SNL a few weeks back which I heard during their Sweet 16 skit.
“Oh my god. You’re acting like such an immigrant!”
I love it because no one really knows what you mean by it. Hell, I don’t even know what it means. That’s what makes it so great. It sounds like it should be an insult, but if you say it when people are being nice you get great looks.
Me: Can I borrow that pen?
Coworker: Sure hands over pen
Me: Oh my god. You’re such an immigrant!
Me yelling at a problem computer: “You are acting like such an immigrant!”
When I’m around my daugher I like to call toilet paper “ass napkins” only because it makes her squirm. Actually, any variation for toilet paper in the store makes her squirm. Ass napkins, bum rubbers, sphincter swabbers, crack cleaner, buttocks moppers.
No wonder she hates going to the store with her dad. Sometimes I act like such an immigrant!
Someone called me on the term “sussed” the other day. I said in an email I think I sussed the error on the server. He’d never heard it before. A quick poll around the office and it seems I was the only one who knew that word.
