#stronglanguage — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #stronglanguage, aggregated by home.social.
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What kind of profanity is this?
Regular readers will be familiar with Strong Language, a group blog about swearing that I co-founded with James Harbeck in 2014. If you’re interested in swearing as a linguistic or cultural phenomenon, I recommend bookmarking or subscribing to it.
New posts by our excellent contributors are less frequent now, but that makes it easier to catch up if you haven’t visited before or feel like browsing the archives. The blog has over 400 posts: fascinating and colourful explorations of profanity for readers not averse to such material.
I also contribute to Strong Language now and then, and this post on Sentence first introduces the last few that I wrote. What follows below is not very sweary – there’s one reference to a strong swear – but if this type of language freaks you out like it does Ned Flanders, or just plain doesn’t interest you, you may prefer to bail out here.
From “Be-bop-a-Lisa” in Simpsons Comics no. 6 (1994). Script & pencils: Bill Morrison; Inks: Tim Bavington; Colours: Cindy Vance. Editor: Steve Vance
I’m interested in how people refer to swearing: as bad language, explicit language, dirty language, adult language, and so on. The adjectives form an intriguing set. ‘Strong bad mature filthy language’ examines the patterns that emerge and explains why I proposed Strong Language as the name for the blog.
The title of the present post, you may have twigged, alludes to Amy Winehouse and her song ‘Me & Mr Jones’, which contains a line I borrowed more directly for ‘What kind of “fuckery” is this?’. The post delves into that word’s meanings and use, originally literal but now usually (and variously) figurative.
Also in a pop-cultural vein, John Boorman’s 1987 drama film Hope and Glory has a scene that depicts swearing as a rite of passage for a group of boys in London during World War II. My short post puts the scene in context and discusses its effects.
Most recently, I wrote about a remarkably successful euphemism in ‘Another freaking f-word’. This use of freaking first appeared in 1928, as far as we know, so its centenary is just around the corner. In the post I look at why and where it has become so freaking popular.
#blogging #etymology #language #linguistics #popCulture #pragmatics #profanity #slang #strongLanguage #swearing #usage #words -
CW: Strong language! And racism etc.
I finally got around to starting Deadwood, of which I collected all three seasons and the bonus movie from op shops. And crikey does it go hard on the colourful language! Quite amazing for a show from the bleepin' USA.
"I may have fucked up my life flatter than hammered shit, but I stand here before you today beholden to no human cocksucker, and holding a working fucking gold claim, and not the U.S. government telling me I'm trespassing, or the savage fucking red man or any of these other limber-dick cocksuckers passing themselves off as prospectors had better try and stop me."
OK. Give the man another whiskey, I guess.
https://trakt.tv/shows/deadwood
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348914/ -
Another freaking f-word. New post for @stronglang about "freaking" as a euphemistic intensifier:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/another-freaking-f-word/#language #swearing #euphemisms #slang #freaking #linguistics #StrongLanguage
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Another freaking f-word. New post for @stronglang about "freaking" as a euphemistic intensifier:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/another-freaking-f-word/#language #swearing #euphemisms #slang #freaking #linguistics #StrongLanguage
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Another freaking f-word. New post for @stronglang about "freaking" as a euphemistic intensifier:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/another-freaking-f-word/#language #swearing #euphemisms #slang #freaking #linguistics #StrongLanguage
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Another freaking f-word. New post for @stronglang about "freaking" as a euphemistic intensifier:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/another-freaking-f-word/#language #swearing #euphemisms #slang #freaking #linguistics #StrongLanguage
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Another freaking f-word. New post for @stronglang about "freaking" as a euphemistic intensifier:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/another-freaking-f-word/#language #swearing #euphemisms #slang #freaking #linguistics #StrongLanguage
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Related: an old @stronglang post on multilingual swearing:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/christ-fucking-shit-merde-on-the-variable-power-of-multilingual-swearing/#swearing #language #linguistics #multilingualism #bilingualism #profanity #StrongLanguage
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Related: an old @stronglang post on multilingual swearing:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/christ-fucking-shit-merde-on-the-variable-power-of-multilingual-swearing/#swearing #language #linguistics #multilingualism #bilingualism #profanity #StrongLanguage
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Fun, end of day read: the saga of Hendrix, a blue-and-gold macaw with a real gift for strong language.
“One day he will call you baby and the next day he’s calling you a...hmm. MFer I guess is the politest way to type it out.”
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Fun, end of day read: the saga of Hendrix, a blue-and-gold macaw with a real gift for strong language.
“One day he will call you baby and the next day he’s calling you a...hmm. MFer I guess is the politest way to type it out.”
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Fun, end of day read: the saga of Hendrix, a blue-and-gold macaw with a real gift for strong language.
“One day he will call you baby and the next day he’s calling you a...hmm. MFer I guess is the politest way to type it out.”
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Fun, end of day read: the saga of Hendrix, a blue-and-gold macaw with a real gift for strong language.
“One day he will call you baby and the next day he’s calling you a...hmm. MFer I guess is the politest way to type it out.”
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Fun, end of day read: the saga of Hendrix, a blue-and-gold macaw with a real gift for strong language.
“One day he will call you baby and the next day he’s calling you a...hmm. MFer I guess is the politest way to type it out.”
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#Quangobaud #Wordpress #ScienceFiction
releasing this bit early as I've only got two parts left to draft but the rest still needs to wait till it's all complete for a continuity read-through
it's the penultimate chapter but the conclusion of the story in which you might be able to tell my mood
update 2025-07-30 this story is actually being de-listed by Wordpress! Y'all should read it just for that!
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“Despite consistently enthusiastic reviewer comments, no editors have yet accepted our work for publication—it seems to be the type of paper that editors are nervous to touch. Currently, the work is under review for a fourth time, for possible inclusion in the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), in a paper titled “Oh F**k! How Do People Feel About Robots That Leverage Profanity?”
#stronglanguage #robotics #sociology
https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/114675943485797239 -
"You can’t join if you can’t swear." New post at @stronglang on swearing as a childhood rite of passage in wartime London:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2025/05/29/swearing-as-a-rite-of-passage/#swearing #profanity #film #language #JohnBoorman #WWII #StrongLanguage
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**Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world**
“_Australians might well be disheartened when they discover that they are not the top users of profanity among English-speaking countries. Their deep national attachment to the vernacular dates back to the original mix of slang, dialect and underworld jargon that gave rise to Australian English — fueled by anti-authoritarian sentiment, the colloquial part of the language expanded to become the feature that best distinguished the established citizen (or old chum) from the stranger (or new chum).”
Schweinberger, M. and Burridge, K. (2025) 'Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world,' Lingua, 321, p. 103946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #Linguistics #Swearing #Vulgarity #StrongLanguage #English #Language #Academia #Academics @linguistics
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**Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world**
“_Australians might well be disheartened when they discover that they are not the top users of profanity among English-speaking countries. Their deep national attachment to the vernacular dates back to the original mix of slang, dialect and underworld jargon that gave rise to Australian English — fueled by anti-authoritarian sentiment, the colloquial part of the language expanded to become the feature that best distinguished the established citizen (or old chum) from the stranger (or new chum).”
Schweinberger, M. and Burridge, K. (2025) 'Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world,' Lingua, 321, p. 103946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #Linguistics #Swearing #Vulgarity #StrongLanguage #English #Language #Academia #Academics @linguistics
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**Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world**
“_Australians might well be disheartened when they discover that they are not the top users of profanity among English-speaking countries. Their deep national attachment to the vernacular dates back to the original mix of slang, dialect and underworld jargon that gave rise to Australian English — fueled by anti-authoritarian sentiment, the colloquial part of the language expanded to become the feature that best distinguished the established citizen (or old chum) from the stranger (or new chum).”
Schweinberger, M. and Burridge, K. (2025) 'Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world,' Lingua, 321, p. 103946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #Linguistics #Swearing #Vulgarity #StrongLanguage #English #Language #Academia #Academics @linguistics
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**Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world**
“_Australians might well be disheartened when they discover that they are not the top users of profanity among English-speaking countries. Their deep national attachment to the vernacular dates back to the original mix of slang, dialect and underworld jargon that gave rise to Australian English — fueled by anti-authoritarian sentiment, the colloquial part of the language expanded to become the feature that best distinguished the established citizen (or old chum) from the stranger (or new chum).”
Schweinberger, M. and Burridge, K. (2025) 'Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world,' Lingua, 321, p. 103946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #Linguistics #Swearing #Vulgarity #StrongLanguage #English #Language #Academia #Academics @linguistics
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**Linguistics expert explains why the c-word 'still has the ability to shock'**
_“The sounds are blunt, there are only four sounds in it, it's a very short sharp word. It's normally delivered with quite a lot of emphasis that it's being used as a profanity and for that reason, that still has the ability to shock.”_
#English #StrongLanguage #Words #Language #Linguistics @linguistics
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Nancy Friedman has an enlightening and safe-for-work discussion of "smut" over on the Strong Language blog
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Why we swear like a trooper, trucker, sailor, fishwife.
Updated my @stronglang post with notes from Ashley Montagu's 1967 book The Anatomy of Swearing:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2022/12/11/trooper-trucker-sailor-fishwife-what-we-swear-like-when-we-swear-like-a-something/#swearing #profanity #linguistics #language #StrongLanguage #AshleyMontagu #idioms
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I keep on getting sent Garron Noone videos ... I had to clip this bit #RobotsAre... #Warning #StrongLanguage
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I keep on getting sent Garron Noone videos ... I had to clip this bit #RobotsAre... #Warning #StrongLanguage
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I keep on getting sent Garron Noone videos ... I had to clip this bit #RobotsAre... #Warning #StrongLanguage
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I keep on getting sent Garron Noone videos ... I had to clip this bit #RobotsAre... #Warning #StrongLanguage
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Listening to a podcast this morning, I noticed the phrase mature language used in a content warning. It’s one of many phrases in the form X language, some of them similarly euphemistic, for what we might more plainly call swearing.
In several of these phrases, the modifier identifies the type of content: abusive language contains abuse, obscene language obscenity, profane language profanity, vulgar language vulgarity. But these categories are tricky to define and tend to overlap in usage; the phrases are often used interchangeably.1
Mature language points to the language’s purported unsuitability for minors, as does adult language. Here the modifiers refer more to the speakers or listeners than to the language itself – if anything, the use of ‘mature’ language is commonly (mis)perceived as immature.
While these last two terms signal clearly that swearing is on the way, they also seem at odds with the facts that (1) children are generally familiar with swear words, and (2) arguably more adults than children are bothered by swear words. But those are separate cans of worms.
Still other synonyms, like bad language, coarse language, indecent language, and offensive language, are laced with moral judgement.2 A few convey this through a metaphor of physical hygiene: dirty language, filthy language, foul language. Geoffrey Hughes, in his Encyclopedia of Swearing (2006), writes:
The use of terms like foul, filth, dirt, and dirty to categorize offensive or abusive language is profound and ancient. Anglo-Saxon ful (“foul”) was used to gloss “obscene” as well as “dirty.” “Shit worde,” dating from 1250, is historically the earliest categorization of coarse speech, followed by “foul speech,” recorded from about 1455.
Bad language and foul language in particular are so common as to be used routinely by people who see nothing ‘bad’ or ‘foul’ about it. Swearing’s bad reputation is thus paradoxically spread by people who may enjoy the activity.
It’s hard not to notice the negative valence of these adjectives. Abusive, bad, coarse, dirty, filthy, foul, indecent, obscene, offensive, profane, vulgar – it’s not a flattering list. That’s to be expected, given the social status of swearing and the stereotypes and misunderstanding that accompany it.
Adult and mature buck that trend, though at the cost of accuracy. Explicit is a relatively neutral descriptor, but it’s also pretty broad. Explicit language could mean plain language – which, as it happens, occasionally means coarse or vulgar language, though nowadays it usually refers to intelligibility.
Taboo language is similarly vague. It often denotes swearing, but it can encompass insults as well as forms of word magic that manifest, for example, as name avoidance – be it the name of something sacred or feared, or both, like a bear or a god.
All of which makes strong language a serious outlier.
When I proposed Strong Language as the name for this blog, back in 2014, I felt it had several things in its favour. For one thing, it’s the rare case of X language where the connotations of X are unequivocally positive. And we’re swear-positive here at Strong Language. It’s also search- and preview-friendly – not a given for a sweary blog about swearing.
And it’s a good pragmatic fit: more than any other register of verbal expression, when you swear, you likely feel strong emotion or desire strong effects, or both. Swearing is powerful, potent, forceful language. It is the idiom of strong feeling. It wears this adjective well.
Comic by Random Crab https://randomcrab.com/1 Michael Adams’s book In Praise of Profanity has insightful discussion of these categories and their blurry boundaries.
2 One sensible alteration is to recast offensive language as ‘language that some viewers/listeners may find offensive’.
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2023/07/13/strong-bad-mature-filthy-language/
#comics #euphemisms #language #linguistics #metaphor #naming #phrases #pragmatics #semantics #StrongLanguage #swearing #taboo #tabooAvoidance #tabooLanguage #tabooWords #taboos
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Listening to a podcast this morning, I noticed the phrase mature language used in a content warning. It’s one of many phrases in the form X language, some of them similarly euphemistic, for what we might more plainly call swearing.
In several of these phrases, the modifier identifies the type of content: abusive language contains abuse, obscene language obscenity, profane language profanity, vulgar language vulgarity. But these categories are tricky to define and tend to overlap in usage; the phrases are often used interchangeably.1
Mature language points to the language’s purported unsuitability for minors, as does adult language. Here the modifiers refer more to the speakers or listeners than to the language itself – if anything, the use of ‘mature’ language is commonly (mis)perceived as immature.
While these last two terms signal clearly that swearing is on the way, they also seem at odds with the facts that (1) children are generally familiar with swear words, and (2) arguably more adults than children are bothered by swear words. But those are separate cans of worms.
Still other synonyms, like bad language, coarse language, indecent language, and offensive language, are laced with moral judgement.2 A few convey this through a metaphor of physical hygiene: dirty language, filthy language, foul language. Geoffrey Hughes, in his Encyclopedia of Swearing (2006), writes:
The use of terms like foul, filth, dirt, and dirty to categorize offensive or abusive language is profound and ancient. Anglo-Saxon ful (“foul”) was used to gloss “obscene” as well as “dirty.” “Shit worde,” dating from 1250, is historically the earliest categorization of coarse speech, followed by “foul speech,” recorded from about 1455.
Bad language and foul language in particular are so common as to be used routinely by people who see nothing ‘bad’ or ‘foul’ about it. Swearing’s bad reputation is thus paradoxically spread by people who may enjoy the activity.
It’s hard not to notice the negative valence of these adjectives. Abusive, bad, coarse, dirty, filthy, foul, indecent, obscene, offensive, profane, vulgar – it’s not a flattering list. That’s to be expected, given the social status of swearing and the stereotypes and misunderstanding that accompany it.
Adult and mature buck that trend, though at the cost of accuracy. Explicit is a relatively neutral descriptor, but it’s also pretty broad. Explicit language could mean plain language – which, as it happens, occasionally means coarse or vulgar language, though nowadays it usually refers to intelligibility.
Taboo language is similarly vague. It often denotes swearing, but it can encompass insults as well as forms of word magic that manifest, for example, as name avoidance – be it the name of something sacred or feared, or both, like a bear or a god.
All of which makes strong language a serious outlier.
When I proposed Strong Language as the name for this blog, back in 2014, I felt it had several things in its favour. For one thing, it’s the rare case of X language where the connotations of X are unequivocally positive. And we’re swear-positive here at Strong Language. It’s also search- and preview-friendly – not a given for a sweary blog about swearing.
And it’s a good pragmatic fit: more than any other register of verbal expression, when you swear, you likely feel strong emotion or desire strong effects, or both. Swearing is powerful, potent, forceful language. It is the idiom of strong feeling. It wears this adjective well.
Comic by Random Crab https://randomcrab.com/1 Michael Adams’s book In Praise of Profanity has insightful discussion of these categories and their blurry boundaries.
2 One sensible alteration is to recast offensive language as ‘language that some viewers/listeners may find offensive’.
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2023/07/13/strong-bad-mature-filthy-language/
#comics #euphemisms #language #linguistics #metaphor #naming #phrases #pragmatics #semantics #StrongLanguage #swearing #taboo #tabooAvoidance #tabooLanguage #tabooWords #taboos