> This is the first study to find that new, made-up “swear” words do not have similar pain alleviation effects to regular swearing.
I think this is in part due to the nature of the words, they “appeal” (perhaps come from) a much older part of our minds than the idea that they might be offensive. The most effective swears are generally about procreation and other bodily functions - the things that we cared about before we even had that much of our current language.
Another side effect of this seems to be visible in those with dementia and other age or illness related degradations: some can barely say a few words normally but can still string a perfectly coherent set of expletives together when they need or want.
somedude895 6 hours ago [-]
For the past few years I've made a conscious effort to not use swear words like "fucking" and "shit" casually. I feel like if they're overused they lose their power, to yourself and to others around you. Everyone of us knows that guy or girl that never normally swears, so then when they do you know it's serious.
My alternative is to use old-fashioned swear words like Fudge, Poppycock, Scullion or Harlot.
It satisfies my urge, and it sounds funny.
xarope 6 hours ago [-]
As a kid, I vaguely remember appropriating some that I thought were from Tin Tin/Captain Haddock, but when I look in the list[1], I don't recognize my favorites :-(.
[edit] holy mackerel, you odd-toed ungulate, I found some!
MattPalmer1086 16 hours ago [-]
At school my German teacher loved to teach us the longest swear word in German (or so he claimed). He would illustrate it by pretending he hit his thumb with a hammer, and then he would let out this wonderful long stream of invective, but which is one word in German. He would then translate it all for us.
No idea if it helps with hitting your thumb with a hammer, but memorable teaching!
MisterTea 16 hours ago [-]
> longest swear word in German
Inquiring minds want to know...
MattPalmer1086 15 hours ago [-]
I wish I could remember. Words in German can be long as they are composed of other words. It was along the lines of thunder and lightning and terrible storms blight you! But I think there was a bit more to it than that.
EDIT; and the teacher may have made the entire thing up of course! Loved his lessons.
vincent-manis 12 hours ago [-]
Untergrundbahnhofzeitschriftsplatz: Subway station newspaper stand
chrisweekly 9 hours ago [-]
The root primitives are so easy to discern and interpret:
under,ground, train,yard
time,writing
place
nothrabannosir 8 hours ago [-]
(Bahn is more like track, not train)
scns 3 hours ago [-]
Sorry to be a pedant but bahnhof means train station
Izkata 3 hours ago [-]
..and then "autobahn" would be..?
detaro 3 hours ago [-]
almost as if word meanings were dependent on context ("railway" would probably have been a more accurate than "train", but going "actually it means track" is just not helpful in this context)
cubefox 15 hours ago [-]
By the way, English also has compound nouns, only they are sometimes written with spaces and sometimes without. Sometimes even with dashes. E.g. compare "coalmine" and "file name". Compound nouns can get arbitrarily long too, e.g. "file name length limit history blog post introduction".
sib 13 hours ago [-]
While English has compound nouns, they are different in that they are not (generally) single words.
"Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Maintenance Building of the Danube Steamboat Shipping Company"
knome 8 hours ago [-]
Squashing "danube steamboat shipping company electric services main maintenance building subordinate officials association" into a single word vs leaving it spaced out is kind of irrelevant. It's like getting excited over PascalCase vs snake_case.
swinglock 6 hours ago [-]
Instead try for example "washing machine motor" and you'll find it's a feature fixing issues with clarity, not a style preference.
cubefox 4 hours ago [-]
That translation is inaccurate because the original is a compound noun, while your translation isn't. The translation posted by knome is more accurate.
> While English has compound nouns, they are different in that they are not (generally) single words.
That's if you define "word" as anything that is separated by spaces in writing. But you could instead count all compound nouns as words. That would have the advantage of not being dependent on arbitrary rules in the writing system.
philwelch 12 hours ago [-]
It just takes longer to standardize them but English absolutely has compound single words. Examples include “folklore”, “pancake”, “manslaughter”, “oatmeal”, “pocketknife”, and “gunman”.
TulliusCicero 11 hours ago [-]
Right, they're just typically limited to two subwords.
philwelch 8 hours ago [-]
Albeit rare, triple compound words are nonetheless commonly used and recognized in English. Many of them sound formal and archaic but they are nevertheless still in common usage nowadays, not merely a relic of the days of highwaymen and crossbowmen. The archaic examples heretofore used notwithstanding, it would be false to claim that there are no triple compound words whatsoever.
(Inasmuch as I've made my point, I will spare you any further woebegone prose.)
joenada 2 hours ago [-]
This guy writes.
sib 9 hours ago [-]
And you can't typically just make them up as you go along and have them accepted as "words."
SoftTalker 15 hours ago [-]
And they work as swears too.
Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch
etc.
cubefox 15 hours ago [-]
Though I believe that's technically not a compound noun. (Fun fact: "compound noun" is a compound noun.)
15 hours ago [-]
schandmaul 7 hours ago [-]
Himmi Herrgott Sackl Zement Zefix Halleluja Mi Leckst Am Oarsch Scheiss Glump Faregets
Edit: It‘s irrelevant if you write it as one word, you certainly say it as one.
thaumasiotes 5 hours ago [-]
> It‘s irrelevant if you write it as one word, you certainly say it as one.
True, but you say everything as one word. You produce "It's irrelevant if you write it as one word" as one word. It has substitutable parts, which is also true of German compound words.
People are shockingly gullible about the fact that compound nouns in German are written without spaces while the grammatically identical compound nouns that are so common in English are written with them, as if spaces occurred in speech.
CamouflagedKiwi 3 hours ago [-]
No you don't. There are stress patterns in words that wouldn't exist if a sentence was all one word - in English words have at most one primary stressed syllable, and a sentence may have multiple such syllables.
cubefox 4 hours ago [-]
> People are shockingly gullible about the fact that compound nouns in German are written without spaces while the grammatically identical compound nouns that are so common in English are written with them, as if spaces occurred in speech.
Yeah. And distinctions that don't even occur in speech are arguably not suited to define the general concept of "word". You wouldn't know from speaking that "coalmine" has no space but "file name" has. I would count them both as single words, because they are single compound nouns.
The "space theory of words" would mean that languages without a writing system don't have "words", or that people who can't read also can't distinguish "words", which is clearly nonsense.
falcor84 3 hours ago [-]
Is "file name" really two words? I can't remember a time I ever saw `file_name`, it's always just `filename`.
cubefox 2 hours ago [-]
Well, I would humbly propose that "file name" is one word, even if it is written with a space, and despite consisting of two words.
techdmn 15 hours ago [-]
Many years ago, my daughter (maybe six at the time), lost something semi-important to her, I don't recall what. I think it might have been her username / pictorial password card for her school network account. Anyway, we were looking for it, and she said "Dad, dad, I don't know where it is, I feel like I'm going to say a bad word".
I, having just read an article like this, said "That's ok, sometimes saying a bad word can help you process your emotions and feel less stressed. Do you want to go down to the basement where nobody can hear you, and say the bad word?"
"Yes". She goes down the stairs, I close the door, and she yells at the top of her lungs: "I can't fucking find it!". I managed not to laugh, she comes back up, "Do you feel better?" "Yes." Great moments in parenting. :-) (We did eventually find whatever it was.)
jacobgkau 13 hours ago [-]
To think, you could've taken that opportunity to point out to her that saying the bad word didn't actually help her find it. Or you could've told her immediately that you heard her through the door because she yelled. Instead, you raised a casual swearer who's unaware of her surroundings. I hope nobody ever has to live in an apartment next to her.
qualeed 12 hours ago [-]
It's comments like this that really make participating on this forum not fun.
It's a cute story. Fuck is just a word. They aren't going to grow up to be a bad person because they said it as a kid, and it's wild to say stuff like this to someone when you have literally no other context about their life or upbringing.
Your weird negativity to a stranger and implying they aren't doing a good job parenting based on them sharing a couple sentence long story is, in my opinion, a worse character trait than saying fuck every now and again. You have 0 idea what kind of kid they are raising.
Oh the horror of a "casual swearer"!
gsinclair 12 hours ago [-]
Praise be to this comment!
galaxyLogic 11 hours ago [-]
There are T-shirts that say
"Fuck You You Fucking Fuck!".
It also can be almost any part of a a sentence. “Fuck the fucking fucks.” Versatile!
johnisgood 3 hours ago [-]
I have a pretty amazing t-shirt that says "Fuck you" all over. I believe it is available in a hoodie version, too. I do not mind wearing it to the doctor's office either. Even though they may not speak English, everyone knows what "Fuck you" means.
Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago [-]
No, but it did teach her you can't just blurt out words like that, teaching self-control. In theory anyway. And she was aware of it - the fact she removed herself etc taught her not to be a casual swearer.
The trick isn't to hide them from bad words - no matter how much censorship you apply to TV, film, youtube, whatever they will learn them. But it's to teach them when to (not) use them. If done right, they'll know they shouldn't just casually use it.
Anyway, love seeing people without kids chime in.
sunrunner 12 hours ago [-]
> saying the bad word didn't actually help her find it
Any proof of this?
lxe 7 hours ago [-]
Sir, this isn't Instagram
sunrunner 1 hours ago [-]
(Knowingly going against all HN comment guidelines...)
And with a few more paragraphs it would also be perfectly formatted for LinkedIn.
4 hours ago [-]
supermatt 4 hours ago [-]
It’s bold of you to critique someone else’s parenting when it’s clearly your own parents who raised the sanctimonious little cunt (not a curse, just an observation) in this conversation.
johnisgood 3 hours ago [-]
I mean, if there is a pattern of her going to the basement to yell whenever, then yeah, it would indeed be bad parenting, and I would not want to live next to her either when she becomes an adult. :D As long as it was a one time thing, sure, but if she was conditioned to believe it was "the right way to swear", then nah.
That said, I could not give a fuck about who swears and who does not swear, but I do give a damn about volume.
(Says the guy who is going to get married to a Latina soon.)
close04 3 hours ago [-]
> you could've taken that opportunity to point out
Let the kids make some "mistakes", and let them think they got away with it. It gives them the some agency, it encourages them to explore and push boundaries, as long as you're there to make sure they don't cross a line they can't come back from. Light swearing is not where you need to draw that line.
9 hours ago [-]
5 hours ago [-]
techbrovanguard 4 hours ago [-]
i will never understand people that are puritains about swearing
bombcar 34 minutes ago [-]
There’s a special form of embarrassment when your five year old suddenly announces to the entire preschool that they “can’t fucking find the truck”.
Some don’t handle it well.
3 hours ago [-]
carpo 12 hours ago [-]
When my kids were younger I tried to to replace my swearing by saying "sugarplum fairies". It was fairly successful in becoming a natural replacement. However, the other day I kicked my toe really badly and instinctively yelled "sugarplum FUCKING fairies" and my kids (now early teen) found it extremely funny.
phantomathkg 8 hours ago [-]
So this is like a more rigorously version of Mythbusters' No Pain, No Gain test then.
I spent two years of high school learning Russian. I can't remember much of it, except the section of the alphabet that sounds like swearing: р, с, т, у, ф, х (pronounced, approximately, and with feeling: "er ess teh, oo eff HAH").
neoden 7 hours ago [-]
Oh, Russian is exceptionally well built for swearing. It provides possibilities barely imaginable from the perspective of languages such as English because of how mutable and composable word structure is. With roughly the same base set of 3-4 swear words the actual number of different forms that could be used goes to thousands and is hard to count, each word having its own shade of meaning and sometimes many more than one.
Can I swear in pain enough to Clockwork Orange myself? Could prove cheaper than the fucking swear jarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
lxe 7 hours ago [-]
This was the first paper I read almost to completion. What a fascinating read. It's cool to see the hypotheses be refuted through experimentation. TL;DR: twizpipe and fouch don't help with pain, while "fuck" does.
kulahan 12 hours ago [-]
I read once that there is a common structure to swear words. If you think about it, fuck, cunt, shit, crap - they all have kiiind of a similar vocal feeling.
I wonder if different fake swear words may have had a different outcome.
Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago [-]
The Farscape ones are great. Frell and dren have similar vibes.
timewizard 16 hours ago [-]
Anecdotally I find swearing makes it worse. Now I just saw "ow!" or "that hurt!" Which honestly feels like it synchronizes my brain past the insult and I can move on much faster past it.
ethan_smith 12 hours ago [-]
This matches research on pain catastrophizing vs. neutralizing - your approach of acknowledging pain directly without emotional amplification may be activating different neural pathways than those enhanced by taboo-word usage.
Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I never get the compulsion to swear when doing something stupid to myself lol. People have impulse control, but it may be stronger in some than others.
MisterTea 16 hours ago [-]
Similar: I say something amusing/funny, e.g. I hit my head on a piece of metal and yelled "ah ya mother was a tin can you metal bastard" which breaks your thought from the pain. Screaming fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... only keeps you focused.
bombcar 32 minutes ago [-]
This is the Captain Haddock method. It’s quite effective as you get distracted thinking up new terms.
chrisweekly 9 hours ago [-]
hahaha, I'm going to try this
Supermancho 7 hours ago [-]
In primates there are commonly 3 noises as a reaction to danger.
Initially the work from the 70s-80s on vervet monkeys https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7433999/
which was then found to be generalized for a host of other primates
~1 for danger in the air
~1 for danger on the ground
misc for unspecified danger
I would bet that modern swearing maps to these calls in a less specific way. Equivalents of "this shite" "that arsehole" and "damnnit" may have an evolutionary origin.
ArtRichards 2 hours ago [-]
I was looking for this comment!
That being a possible reason why certain words alleviate, they actually operate at a different level in our conciousness.
kulahan 12 hours ago [-]
I use a mix of both, but when I’m in really serious pain, I also find it’s more effective when I’m just like “Wew. WOW. Yeah that’s pretty good there. Phew. Wow. WOOOW.”
I dunno why, but wow seems to work well for me.
Finnucane 16 hours ago [-]
You'll sing a different tune when you're getting fouched in the twizpipe.
Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago [-]
Getting frelled in the eema, if you will.
codeulike 16 hours ago [-]
Twizpipe
bombcar 31 minutes ago [-]
I’m going to keep this as a replacement for “piehole” the next time I need it with a twizzler eater.
Anecdotally, I find swearing in German and Italian satisfying and people around usually don't understand, so no issues there.
pif 15 hours ago [-]
I had been working at CERN for a bit less than a year, when my Russo-Israelian coworker, who had never visited Italy, erupted in a perfect "Porca puttana!" that made me question my manners in the office.
fuzzy_biscuit 14 hours ago [-]
I swear in Italian and Russian. Great minds think alike!
slowmovintarget 16 hours ago [-]
"Glenfarclas!" I frequently exclaim to the bewilderment of my child.
IAmBroom 15 hours ago [-]
There's a lovely story of a dad who's wife said, "Lil Johhny said a bad word today. Go talk to him." Or something to that effect.
"Johnny, Momma tells me you said X. That's pretty bad, but at least you didn't say the worst word..."
"What's that?" "Can't tell you!" <negotiations> "OK, but you have to PROMISE you'll never say it in front of Momma. It's <whispers> booglashek."
Next day, all his friends were over, calling each other booglasheks.
smitelli 15 hours ago [-]
Percy Livermore: We must rid our speech of slang. Now, besides "OK", I want you all to promise me that there are two words that you will never use. One of these is "swell" and the other one is "lousy".
Lucy Ricardo: OK, what are they?
Percy Livermore: [with emphasis] One of them is "swell" and the other one is "lousy".
Fred Mertz: Well, give us the lousy one first.
EvanAnderson 13 hours ago [-]
I spelled around my daughter. This worked until, between 3 and 4 y/o, she asked a preschool teacher what "F-U-C-K" spelled. The teacher asked where she'd heard it and she said her father spelled it a lot.
mjanx123 16 hours ago [-]
The origin of language
throwaheyy 15 hours ago [-]
"Theres a fucking goat outside."
"No, it's just 'a goat'."
"No! It's a fucking goat!"
bregma 1 hours ago [-]
Why do you ask, Two Dogs?
irrational 13 hours ago [-]
Personally I’m more into sheep, but I won’t kink shame.
goopypoop 11 hours ago [-]
Inside you there are two fucking wolves
chrisweekly 9 hours ago [-]
what do you call...
a deer with no eyes?
no idea
a deer w no eyes and no front legs?
still no idea
a deer with no eyes, no front legs, and no balls?
still no fucking idea
hn_go_brrrrr 7 hours ago [-]
This joke only works in the right accent, where "idea" is prounced "idear".
ascorbic 6 hours ago [-]
Or non-rhotic accents, where neither have the final R sound
adammarples 13 hours ago [-]
What the jiggins!
layer8 16 hours ago [-]
(2020)
Rendered at 11:43:05 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I think this is in part due to the nature of the words, they “appeal” (perhaps come from) a much older part of our minds than the idea that they might be offensive. The most effective swears are generally about procreation and other bodily functions - the things that we cared about before we even had that much of our current language.
Another side effect of this seems to be visible in those with dementia and other age or illness related degradations: some can barely say a few words normally but can still string a perfectly coherent set of expletives together when they need or want.
It satisfies my urge, and it sounds funny.
[1] https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Captain_Haddock%27s_C...
[edit] holy mackerel, you odd-toed ungulate, I found some!
No idea if it helps with hitting your thumb with a hammer, but memorable teaching!
Inquiring minds want to know...
EDIT; and the teacher may have made the entire thing up of course! Loved his lessons.
For example, the lovely and memorable
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
would be translated into something like
"Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Maintenance Building of the Danube Steamboat Shipping Company"
> While English has compound nouns, they are different in that they are not (generally) single words.
That's if you define "word" as anything that is separated by spaces in writing. But you could instead count all compound nouns as words. That would have the advantage of not being dependent on arbitrary rules in the writing system.
(Inasmuch as I've made my point, I will spare you any further woebegone prose.)
Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch
etc.
Edit: It‘s irrelevant if you write it as one word, you certainly say it as one.
True, but you say everything as one word. You produce "It's irrelevant if you write it as one word" as one word. It has substitutable parts, which is also true of German compound words.
People are shockingly gullible about the fact that compound nouns in German are written without spaces while the grammatically identical compound nouns that are so common in English are written with them, as if spaces occurred in speech.
Yeah. And distinctions that don't even occur in speech are arguably not suited to define the general concept of "word". You wouldn't know from speaking that "coalmine" has no space but "file name" has. I would count them both as single words, because they are single compound nouns.
The "space theory of words" would mean that languages without a writing system don't have "words", or that people who can't read also can't distinguish "words", which is clearly nonsense.
I, having just read an article like this, said "That's ok, sometimes saying a bad word can help you process your emotions and feel less stressed. Do you want to go down to the basement where nobody can hear you, and say the bad word?"
"Yes". She goes down the stairs, I close the door, and she yells at the top of her lungs: "I can't fucking find it!". I managed not to laugh, she comes back up, "Do you feel better?" "Yes." Great moments in parenting. :-) (We did eventually find whatever it was.)
It's a cute story. Fuck is just a word. They aren't going to grow up to be a bad person because they said it as a kid, and it's wild to say stuff like this to someone when you have literally no other context about their life or upbringing.
Your weird negativity to a stranger and implying they aren't doing a good job parenting based on them sharing a couple sentence long story is, in my opinion, a worse character trait than saying fuck every now and again. You have 0 idea what kind of kid they are raising.
Oh the horror of a "casual swearer"!
See: https://www.etsy.com/market/fuck_you_you_fucking
The trick isn't to hide them from bad words - no matter how much censorship you apply to TV, film, youtube, whatever they will learn them. But it's to teach them when to (not) use them. If done right, they'll know they shouldn't just casually use it.
Anyway, love seeing people without kids chime in.
Any proof of this?
And with a few more paragraphs it would also be perfectly formatted for LinkedIn.
That said, I could not give a fuck about who swears and who does not swear, but I do give a damn about volume.
(Says the guy who is going to get married to a Latina soon.)
Let the kids make some "mistakes", and let them think they got away with it. It gives them the some agency, it encourages them to explore and push boundaries, as long as you're there to make sure they don't cross a line they can't come back from. Light swearing is not where you need to draw that line.
Some don’t handle it well.
I wonder if different fake swear words may have had a different outcome.
Initially the work from the 70s-80s on vervet monkeys https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7433999/ which was then found to be generalized for a host of other primates
~1 for danger in the air
~1 for danger on the ground
misc for unspecified danger
I would bet that modern swearing maps to these calls in a less specific way. Equivalents of "this shite" "that arsehole" and "damnnit" may have an evolutionary origin.
That being a possible reason why certain words alleviate, they actually operate at a different level in our conciousness.
I dunno why, but wow seems to work well for me.
"Johnny, Momma tells me you said X. That's pretty bad, but at least you didn't say the worst word..."
"What's that?" "Can't tell you!" <negotiations> "OK, but you have to PROMISE you'll never say it in front of Momma. It's <whispers> booglashek."
Next day, all his friends were over, calling each other booglasheks.
Lucy Ricardo: OK, what are they?
Percy Livermore: [with emphasis] One of them is "swell" and the other one is "lousy".
Fred Mertz: Well, give us the lousy one first.
"No, it's just 'a goat'."
"No! It's a fucking goat!"
a deer with no eyes? no idea
a deer w no eyes and no front legs? still no idea
a deer with no eyes, no front legs, and no balls? still no fucking idea