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community weblog
The curse word triggers more than just emotional release
Deep inside the brain, the pituitary gland and the periaqueductal gray—a column of gray matter in the midbrain—release beta-endorphins and enkephalins, the body's natural painkillers. These chemicals dull pain and create a faint sense of relief, turning language into a physical act—mobilizing breath, muscles and blood before returning the body to calm. This integrated response—from brain to muscle to skin—explains why a sharp expletive can feel simultaneously instinctive and satisfying. from The Health Benefits of Swearing [The Conversation]
posted by chavenet on Jan 20, 2026 at 11:03 AM
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fuck yeah!
posted by nofundy at 11:09 AM
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My wife has a mug that states: "I do not spew profanities, I enunciate them clearly like a lady."
posted by furiouscupcake at 11:21 AM
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Dadgum right they do!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:24 AM
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Surprised they made it through an entire article on the benefits of swearing without quoting Mark Twain: Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
posted by TedW at 11:35 AM
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This swear made my day.
posted by doctornemo at 11:35 AM
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This swear made my day.
Agreed, just wish it had been someone else who said it.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:42 AM
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Conversely, pseudo-swears like darnit or fudge leave you feeling worse, like stifling a sneeze
posted by gottabefunky at 12:05 PM
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They do? Well consarn it!
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:05 PM
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you fuckin' rang?
posted by lalochezia at 12:10 PM
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Anthony Hopkins said something profound about swearing once; it was a follow-up to when he answered "what's your favorite curse word" on Inside the Actor's Studio. (He opted for "fuck".)
He told a story about asking a priest friend of his what the shortest prayer was. His friend surprisingly told him it's: "fuck it". Then he explained that that counts as a prayer because in essence, when you throw up your hands and say "fuck it", you are saying "I give up - God, you take over."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:10 PM
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"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."
Mark Twain
(that cockwomble)
posted by lalochezia at 12:12 PM
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lalochezia: "you fuckin' rang?"
of the available chezias , lalo is by far the most agreeable!
dyschezia
allochezia
posted by chavenet at 12:26 PM
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allochezia
a wild shithole appears!
posted by lalochezia at 12:34 PM
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What's worse than swearing is a lack of swearing where there should be swearing.
I'm thinking specifically about people posting memes and what-not with swear words crudely edited out. What "injury" are they preventing that's greater than the one they fucking cause? I assure you I am strong enough to see the word "cock" or "cunt" or "fuck" or even, gods forbid, "kill" or "die". It's even cathartic for me to see those words, in those contexts.
Is prudishness something that comes with fascism?
posted by maxwelton at 12:48 PM
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I assure you I am strong enough to see the word "cock" or "cunt" or "fuck" or even, gods forbid, "kill" or "die". It's even cathartic for me to see those words, in those contexts.
I think this actually traces back to censorship rules from certain platforms like youtube, who are trying to be as advertiser friendly as possible (enshittification strikes again). People get conditioned to self-censor in all places the way they would have to in order to avoid their video being de-emphasized/de-listed due to words like 'kill' or 'suicide' as well as expletives, either because they can't be arsed to know when such censorship is required, or simply out of laziness.
posted by axiom at 1:32 PM
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Bosh! Flimshaw!
posted by mittens at 1:40 PM
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Kelly Clarkson!
posted by Kabanos at 2:06 PM
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I picked up cursing when I was about 12, and it did feel like using a different part of my brain.
I've wondered why cursing exists, and why it's walled off in some contexts.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:08 PM
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Bosh! Flimshaw!
Which reminds me, I need to get some minced oaths started tonight so they'll be ready for breakfast tomorrow.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:33 PM
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Didn't your mother tell you not to mince words, though?
posted by jamjam at 2:41 PM
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They'll probably give you severe indiscretion.
posted by jamjam at 2:48 PM
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One of my old bosses liked to say "fuckadoodledoo." It was very funny.
posted by wicked_sassy at 2:51 PM
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Malcolm Tucker must be the healthiest motherfucker on the planet.
posted by brundlefly at 3:12 PM
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I try to teach the teens that its important to recognise that swear words are ok and fun in some contexts not others. 'You kiss your mother with that mouth' is real - I don't think my mum has ever heard me swear, but if I'm drinking and bantering with a bunch of sailors then let's go. You need to be able to flip your internal swearing switches to be a civilised person.
There's reflexive swearing - saying 'Fuckin' ouch' when you stub your toe - which is what the article is about.
There's swearing for emphasis/attention after running out of other adjectives - saying 'You need to understand that I'm fucking angry' after someone failing to comprehend your earlier explanation for being angry.
There's swearing for humour - Malcolm Tucker's world-weary 'Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off' always makes me laugh.
And there's peppering your language with swear words because you lack the vocabulary. This one always shits me.
posted by jjderooy at 4:14 PM
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And there's peppering your language with swear words because you lack the vocabulary.
Fuckin' amateurs
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:33 PM
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Ge hed, try to pry mah swears from my cold ded hends, ye loblolly churnizen densest, twee heair fixin bottlesprite, upright walkin ape of suitcase lost in an airport, suit wearin dribbler whose coffee cup was given te him by someone who couldn't read, nasty incarnation of a dustbin, ye don't know how te do my joab but ye still feel obliged to comment on how to do it, waste of motor oil, feck all crisps with no salt whatsoever, human pile of tissue and matter without a spinal column nor data center, your curtains are sheer you absolute twat.
Oh wait those are curses, sorry. Feck.
posted by winesong at 5:43 PM
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A group of older boys were trying to help with my bicycle chain and one of them got his cuff stuck in the wheel. I learned early on what to say and how to do say it.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 6:58 PM
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I'm not big on substitution swears but I do still use Erika-Alexander-as-Maxine-Shaw's line from Living Single*: "Dang dang dingitty dong!!"
*Her character is someone who definitely would swear, but it was network so they did their best
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:38 PM
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feck all crisps with no salt whatsoever
Oh, I like that!
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:04 PM
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I've been saying for years now that profanity is the spice of language.
posted by zoinks at 11:21 PM
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Censorship is essential to swearing. You can't have profanity—it's not profane—unless it's forbidden somewhere. The more places you're not allowed to use a word, the more cathartic it is to say it.
posted by straight at 11:38 PM
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It's like there's a built in place for forbidden language in our brains.
For many if not most of the people who comment here, the traditional stuff has moved out, and ethnic slurs and insulting terms for sexual minorities have moved in.
posted by jamjam at 11:48 PM
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What's worse than swearing is a lack of swearing where there should be swearing.
In the old world of print, magazines and books would often render swear words as "f--k" or "c**t". This always struck me as perverse, not only because it drew extra attention to the word it was supposed to be obscuring, but also because every reader automatically filled in the blanks anyway.
I also recall that, back in the 1970s, when Don McGregor was writing the Luke Cage comic book Here for Hire, he would try to reproduce the street slang heard in the era's blaxploitation movies, but was hamstrung by the fact that Marvel them allowed no swearing. My favourite euphemism of his at that time was "used food" for "shit". As in: "I feel like used food this morning".
posted by Paul Slade at 1:07 AM
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the effect is particularly noticeable if you are learning or using a second (third, fourth etc) language and you accidentally say one of the prohibited words in an inappropriate setting. most of the time you have no real sense of the true potency of the language, for you it's just more vocab and yet... I guess it's a sign of fluency, getting over that
posted by chavenet at 2:03 AM
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I've been saying for years now that profanity is the spice of language.
Tradtionarlly, in English anyway, the adjective is "salty". To continue the allusion, what spoils a dish faster than anything but pouring on too much salt?
posted by BWA at 4:50 AM
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To continue the allusion, what spoils a dish faster than anything but pouring on too much salt?
....sometimes you have to preserve food from an environment that will ROT it.
bring on the salt slathering, fuckfaces!
posted by lalochezia at 6:04 AM
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There's swearing for emphasis/attention after running out of other adjectives - saying 'You need to understand that I'm fucking angry' after someone failing to comprehend your earlier explanation for being angry.
Back in the theater days there were some shows where I withheld any F-bombs until I really needed them; usually I would save them for if I had a really serious announcement involving combat/weapons safety. Some of the shows I worked on had prop guns, and even with unloaded guns you have to have some kind of safety protocol in place. I would usually deliver this lecture in a later rehearsal, where I laid out exactly who was allowed to touch the gun and under what specific circumstances, and then I would finish up by staring hard at everyone and saying "and so the rest of you, unless I give you approval in the moment, you are not allowed to fuck with this gun." Since it was usually the first time anyone ever heard chirpy and happy little me drop an F-bomb it tended to get attention.
There was one non-gun instance, though - a rehearsal for a production of Hamlet. There was a storage closet in the back of the house where we were keeping all the rapiers, and at the end of the rehearsal for the swordfight scene I head back there to put them away as the rest of the cast scattered to the dressing rooms, the bathrooms, and other spots in the house. I had the three rapiers in my left hand, holding them by the blades in a bundle (they were blunted, but heavy) as I used my right hand to unlock the latch. As I fiddled with it, one of the blades slithered out of my grip and fell straight down - pommel first, landing directly onto my big toe.
Prior to that moment, no one in the cast had heard me say "fuck". At that moment, everyone in the cast heard me say "fuck" simultaneously. (Although, it was more like "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!")
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:47 AM
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Nothing makes you aware of how much you actually swear like having kids. First come the years of self-censorship. Then they become teenagers.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:08 AM
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Nothing makes you aware of how much you actually swear like having kids.
When my child was 16 they got me the best Father's Day card ever. On the cover was a shirtless kid in one of those little plastic cars yelling "Pick a lane, A-hole!!!" Inside it said "Ever wonder if the kids listen to you? Yes. Yes they do. Happy Father's Day!"
posted by TedW at 9:21 AM
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My mother went to nursing school about, oh, nearly ninety years ago in the late 1930s. One of her first patients as a nurse was an elderly nun who had suffered a stroke and lost the power of speech. She had not, however, lost the power of swear. Her vocabulary was enormous and in astounding detail both anatomically and activity-wise as to who did what when where etc. She was upset and swore like a sailor. Vehemently. My mom was a farm girl from Kansas. She was impressed.
posted by y2karl at 9:57 AM
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Just in case this thread needs a theme song.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:15 AM
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I always wanted a Schoolhouse Rock Interjections, but for swearing.
But I'll settle for George Carlin-voiced Thomas the Tank Engine scenes with some of his swearier standup bits swapped in (very NSFW audio).
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:51 AM
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jjderooy: "I try to teach the teens that its important to recognise that swear words are ok and fun in some contexts not others. 'You kiss your mother with that mouth' is real - I don't think my mum has ever heard me swear, but if I'm drinking and bantering with a bunch of sailors then let's go. You need to be able to flip your internal swearing switches to be a civilised person."
I would consider myself a terrible mother if I cared that my children cursed.
posted by cooker girl at 1:53 PM
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Strokes that take away the ability for ordinary speech but spare swearing are common, and here is a brainfacts.org article from a few years ago which discusses the phenomenon and features the work of a researcher who thinks the right side of the brain is used for swearing in people who usually use the left for speech.
Schizophrenics also tend to swear a lot and here is a Reddit thread about that which includes a comment I found very interesting: My brother doesn't speak about sexual subjects, but is vulgar in other ways.
When he is having an episode, he will use every ethnic slur. It almost seems like he is intentionally trying to get a rise out of people. The news articles about him getting arrested always include the fact that he is yelling these vulgarities which made people obviously uncomfortable.
It's curious, however, because our at-home cameras catch him yelling these slurs when he is home alone. Our Ring camera has captured him going outside and just screaming the N-word into the skies at the top of his lungs. Of course that is an issue because we live in a suburban neighborhood and the neighbors are fairly close. Our immediate neighbor has even put a restraining order against him.
Anyways, I do wonder if and why vulgarity in general is a part of schizophrenia.
posted by jamjam at 2:25 PM
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I would consider myself a terrible mother if I cared that my children cursed.
Point taken, but oh my god I'm tired of hearing my kids say fuck every 30 seconds.
posted by mittens at 3:15 PM
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I would consider myself a terrible mother if I cared that my children cursed.
I would have considered myself a terrible mother if I hadn't cared about my children's language when they were growing up. And I believe that in most families daily life, and in most social interactions, swearing is not necessary. Kids are horrible about knowing what situations are appropriate for swear words, so it was just easier to ban them from the get-go. It didn't bother me to hear a swear word used reflexively or for emphasis as they entered their teens, but I'd still give them side eye. When they were old enough to understand the idea of code-switching and tailoring speech to an audience, then I took off the parental brakes.
Like jjderooy, 'peppering your language with swear words because you lack the vocabulary' is not what I wanted to encourage. My kids were never allowed to swear at their sibs (in theory! in reality, where I could hear them) and never at a parent or another adult. I still prefer we don't swear at each other, although it has happened. Apologies ensued.
I grew up with swearing being completely forbidden. I expected my kids to be restrained in their swearing and know that most situations are not appropriate for it. A couple of my grandkids were pretty much well given free rein in their choice of language, and it didn't help them when the entered school and in other social situations. There's a time and a place.
I have a pet peeve about so-called comedians who swearing as a replacement for humor. Fuck once can be funny, but just repeating 'fuuuuuuck' 73 times in a 5-minute set is not amusing. It's not that I'm a prude--Billy Connolly is brilliant, and George Carlin's 7 words is top shelf humor. But a lot of comedians these days use bad language as a substitute for thought.
posted by BlueHorse at 4:50 PM
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I like swearing, but the only time I get annoyed by it is if somebody just repeats the same word over and over and over and over and over and over again.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:00 PM
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I just want to say that one of my password generating algorithms is based on George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never* Say on Television".
* for some values of "never"
posted by mikelieman at 6:26 AM
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Oh FFS of course I cared about their language when they were growing up and I absolutely taught them that there is a time and place for cursing. I took exception to the implication that mothers are saintly and special and other-worldly and cannot possibly ever survive if their children curse.
I'm consistently surprised by the things MeFites consider unacceptable. Jesus, you'd think we were all delicate little flowers. Like, cursing? So far down on the list of things to be worried about. So. Far. Down.
posted by cooker girl at 10:24 AM
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I don't think letting kids curse harms them. Nor does it make parents cooler. It just makes swears weaker.
How am I supposed to express my manly adult frustration with this un-openable plastic packaging using swears from the grade school playground?
posted by straight at 12:42 PM
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