There are these maps of the popularity of certain cuss words in the US — I, of course, browsed through them looking for my county to see what word is representative of our preferred profanity. There are all these words that I’d blush to say in front of my mother, and nope, Stevens County is on the low end for all of them. There’s only one where we stand out.
My county is easy to spot. Notice that the western edge of Minnesota is mostly straight north and south, except in roughly the middle, where there’s a little wart protruding into South Dakota? Go a little bit directly east of that, and there’s this perfectly square county colored a dark orange in this map. That’s us. (If you need a labeled county map, here’s one.)
Our big dirty swear word around these parts? It’s “Darn”.
I am totally unsurprised.
Oh, go darn some socks.
I grew up in assholeland–no surprise there, the northeast is full of assholes. Now I live in north shitsville.
I’m a bit disturbed that my San Francisco Bay Area is slightly higher than average on the use of “faggot”.
Western NC looks pretty tame. I’m working on that.
These things are always very interesting though with mass communication and transportation with communities being far more fluid than they ever were in the past I would have thought these maps would be a little more homogenized.
re @1:
I too, live in Masshole land and was *shocked* that “asshole” would be one of the favorites in this region. Who wouldathunkit? Wikkid kewl, yep.
“Darn” counts as a cuss word? I thought darn was what you said when you didn’t want to actually cuss.
re @5:
duble wikkid, we massholes are totes opposed to “darn” as a cussword. I guess we save the “darn”ing for socks (sox). *nyuck*
I like the very clear band across the south for “bitch”, “damn”, and “shit”. Clearly very southern words in the US!
I’m with Thumper @6 on this one. “Darn” wouldn’t have rated a place on a list of cuss words.
American swearword substitution is adorable <: )
I wonder what correlation could be made if you were to overlay this map with the fossil map.
slithy tove @7,
And the damning for Yankees.
slithey tove. Sorry for the misspelling.
And sadly I no longer live in Massholeland.
Good grief. I just noticed on the linked page that they have “gosh” on the list of cuss words. Seriously? They have to be fucking kidding. “Gosh” is even more lame than “darn”. Someone needs to train these assholes in the fine art of cussing.
“GOSH” IS NOT A FUCKING CURSE! Get your shit together, Americans.
Supposedly, I live in the Land of Cunt, but I hardly ever hear that word here. Maybe it’s a Twitter-specific phenomenon? I can’t remember the last time I heard someone use the word as a curse, and it’s not in my own working vocabulary at all.
25 years ago a co-worker from Omaha introduced me to “shucky-darn.”
Interesting. The Florida panhandle loves asshole.
It’s interesting that certain cusswords (one of which, I think, sent my last attempt at this comment into moderation) seem to exist solely in the South.
I can’t stand the word “cuss”.
I like the circular places, especially the ones with a lighter center. Hmm, maybe a radio personality with a favorite morning phrase?
The inclusion of maps for “gosh” and “darn” are fine by me. They need to be overlaid with other words to see where they are substitutes.
My county is on the edge of the South in some cases. But not all.
I couldn’t find “rabbit me bloody backwards” anywhere.
Cuss is the non-cussing way of saying curse.
Aaaah!
Tony, #16
That would explain why the South seems to love shit so much.
I’m in east Texas, placing me in damn shit bitch country, and on the border of the Fucklands. I’m fine with using curse words as a precision tool, but for reasons that should be obvious, I avoid ‘bitch’. I hope the blue patches on the ‘cunt’ map over here are from the southeastern states’ aversion spreading westward instead of contracting eastward. I’m not holding my breath, though.
They say pessimists tend to be happier because life ends up being better than their expectations. Clearly, I lack their sunny disposition.
I bet the use of “well, shitgoddamnhellfuck” is focused on those who once owned Tesla’s “Five Man Acoustical Jam,” preferably on cassette.
Apparently the good (British) professor who launched this is too genteel, or too naïve, to look for ethnic slurs.
Tony!… @ # 16: The Florida panhandle loves asshole.
* Must resist obvious rejoinder… *
One of us must be reading these maps backwards – doesn’t deep blue signify a relative paucity of the word under consideration? As I interpret it, the South in general, except for south Texas and (to a lesser degree) southern Florida, eschews asshole.
Oddly, where I live in Alachua County (central area of northern end of Fla peninsula) comes out on the lower end of every word mapped. Have the ‘Gators just given up on tweeting about the ‘Noles?
I don’t know where I should be – I grew up in the midwest, but didn’t start swearing until after I lived in the northeast.
Words I use:
Bastard – northeast, I stopped using it after thinking about the connotations
Asshole – northeast, I started using it only due to the influence of people online (AHEM)
Hell – both
Crap – very strongly midwest
Gosh and darn – midwest. Usually combined to “gosh darn it”
Damn – both
Shit – both
Fuck – northeast. Interesting how the “fuck” map is edges of the country only.
So northeast barely wins out – interesting!
He maps the Harvard dialect survey too – neat!
Pierce R Butler @27:
Oops. I think I’m reading it wrong and you had it right.
Also, go ahead with the rejoinder. I set that up deliberately so if anyone wanted to pound away at it they could.
The California word-of-the-day is “fuck.” Just as I thought. It’s bright red for fuck all over the state.
As a non-native speaker, English doesn’t strike me as the best language to curse in.
These seem to be just the one-word expletives in common use;
If actual curses were recorded, the absence of the N-word is puzzling.
BTW, SF Ca. may be a case of re-appropriation.
Mormon substitutes for swear words, not covered:
Fudge for fuck
Fetch for fuck
Fudge Bucket for fucker
Freakin’ for fucking
H-E double hockey sticks for hell
Heck for hell
Dang for damn
Snot for shit
Stinker Bugs for little shits
Shut the Front Door for holy shit
Jackwagon or Jack Wad for asshole
Dag Nabit for Goddamnit
Mother Hugger for motherfucker
@ Tony!:
I see what you did there.
How unfortunate that it’s posted at that click-bait shit-hole of a site Gawker. They posted this on the 16tht and I’m not sure any of the words they mapped could quite rise to the response that ‘story’ requires.
Gawker: gay-shaming, blackmailing and outing people. I’m not sure there’s a word that is appropriate.
There are several more maps here.
Not clear if he’s British. According to his homepage he got his degree from Northern Arizona University and did a post-doc in Belgium.
re @32:
yeah, agree. I’m sure that’s what people say to fauxcuss, (pun unintended, “focus”) but this dataset is from twitter (geotagged) so it is a mapping of the words used as cusses in writing. So people arguing about including “darn”, go <expletive> yourselves. This is not a prescriptive list of swearwords by region, but a descriptive list of words used as swears (in writing, not vocally), mapped geographically.
wicked
geographic distribution of cusswords is “fascinating”.
re 32:
interesting. thanks for the correction.Ignorant me would’ve assumed:
Shut the Front Door :== Shut the F~~~ Up !!!
adding to my lexikonns
This is fucking relevant.
Why Are Bad Words Bad? by Vsauce
slithey tove, it does mean ‘Shut the fuck up!’, just apparently not in Mormon country.
Lots of the overlap between distributions of swearing and the “Eleven Nations of North America” map struck me as interesting:
http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/fall2013/features/up-in-arms.html
Is there some kind of moderation going on here? I posted a comment, and it didn’t show, and I posted again and got a “this is a duplicate comment” screen.
I cussed in the first comment, but I really don’t get WTF is going on. Oh well. Sunny day. Cold beer. Whatever.
So I tried to post it again, with minor edits, and it didn’t go through.
You can’t put up a cuss map and then reject comments with cussing. Jesusfuckingchrist.
Thomathy @34:
Gawker is taking that story down. It shouldn’t have been up in the first place though.
No discussion of cussing (cussion?) is complete without a link or two anent Maledicta, produced by the inimitable Reinhold Aman.
I wonder if tweets represent actual usage? If your tweet is limited in characters you might not opt to spell out motherfucker. Also, your family and classy friends (if you have any) might be on your feed and you might be more careful with a tweet than with a conversation where you know who is able to hear you. Obviously that doesn’t apply to everybody or they wouldn’t have been able to make the map, but it might skew things.
When people use euphemisms for their cussing, (or another one that sets me off, the asterisk substitution, grr) I like to come along and point out that still says ‘fuck’ or ‘damn’ or whatever.
Because it just inflames me in some sort of rage, especially when they go all ‘morally superior’ for doing it, and want a cookie (“I wanted to use the word, but look, I said ‘fudge’ instead…”) or act like they can’t cuss because god. Um, so this would be the — lemme see if I have them all — the so-called omniscient god, the one who knew you before you were born, the one who said committing a sin in your heart is the same as actually committing the sin, the one who expressly forbids taking his name in vain, and evidently has a pesky little verse in Ephesians (4:29) about not aying unwholesome things…that god? Riiight. Plus, when everyone KNOWS what you meant to say, being all fake-virtuous with euphemisms puts the burden of ‘sin’ onto others who know exactly what was meant. That one is fun to point out…leading others in to sin, also a big no, after all.
Eric @26 “well, shitgoddamnhellfuck”
I use some variation of that one a lot.
But as far back as my childhood, it has pissed me off that people school me on my language while saying truly horrible things about me, and about others, and then crowing about it because they “didn’t cuss” while they were being so nasty and hateful (not that the believe they’re being those things, oh noo, they’re just ‘not PC’ or ‘don’t sugarcoat’, just telling it like it is. Ugh)
I seem to be pretty solidly in a “fuck” region with a generous sprinkling of “gosh”. Must be the rest of us vs the Mormons.
roachiesmom @46:
Ah the people who think fuck is just so incredibly deeply bad and hurtful while simultaneously arguing that women should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their wishes.
Ok, I’m going to try this one last time, and edit the thing that may be thwarting me. Though in this thread it shouldn’t be necessary.
Just want to say that while “cu%t” is trending as a popular cuss in the northeast of the US, I live in Canada, and the NE states are the closest to me, so this usage habit may be transnational. But I would never use “cu%t” as a cuss word. They are things deserving of reverence, and while I do use the word with my spouse, it is just the name for one of the most beautiful things on the planet. I actively discourage people from using this word as an expletive or a derogatory term. And those pricks who do use it that way are gosh darn fucking assholes.
Let’s see if this got posted.
Also @45 & 46, you are both right on.
Ok, so it’s the “c” word that banishes a post. The last time I used that word in a post it didn’t get me censored. Change.
My mother-in-law used to say “dirty word, dirty word, dirty word”, especially if there were kids around.
It sounded sort of cute with her southern accent.
@Tony 48
I hate that too. The profanity is a means of directing attention and seriousness of personal feelings, and then they ignore the true obscenity…
Belgium!
huh, apparently my home state doesn’t cuss much on Twitter. We just save it all for direct interactions I guess.
My Goodness, I had never looked up Morris on a map before. You really are in the middle of nowhere. I imagine that Lake Wobegon is closer to civilization.
SO, where are Alaska and Hawaii? This is a twitter study, so geography isn’t a limiting factory, so why were they left off?
You could get a better read on Massachusetts swearing by bugging the cars on the Mass Pike at rush hour. My go-to for traffic situations is “Jesus fucking asshole christ”. Also, we need maps of impolite gestures, though I assume the finger is popular everywhere.
Now I kinda wonder what a map of the popularity of cuss words around the world would look like. And what some of those words would be.
Not surprised to see that my old growing-up grounds, Fort Wayne, Indiana, is almost always grouped with the Southern Midlands as far as “cussing” (always makes me think of The Fantastic Mr. Fox: “Ah, clustercuss!”). They love their “crap,” “heck,” and “bullhockey” out there. Oh, and Utah. They’re also a lot like Utah.
Take a look at the north-east corner of ‘ol Indiana on any of the maps with a big swath of orange in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Utah, and you’ll see a nice orange patch in Fort Wayne, the current champion in the Most Depressing City in the World competition.
For proof, consider the Crap Map.
Finally. A clear explanation of what you Americans mean by “red” and “blue” states…
There seems to be a gosh belt in the U.S with Texas as the ornate buckle of the Gosh Belt, Morridor as the other part and a Gosh Bellybutton in Nebraska. The Bible Belt (defined accordong to the map in Wikipedia) seems to consist of Damn-B-word belt and eastern Gosh Belt.
I wonder if the popularity of damn in the South is partly due to “damn Yankee”?
It seems also that gosh does not survive well near any oceans or fucks. Only West Texas and some smaller areas seem to be able to support dense populations of both goshes and fucks.
I was kind of surprised that motherfucker seems to be most popular in the Southwest, mostly along the border with Mexico.