Why swearing is good for you | Hacker News Reader

Why swearing is good for you

qz.com

118 pointsprostoalex94 comments

Tossing wanker slag cheese eating surrender monkey bastards of daft cow arsehole barmy chav dodgy gormless git of a manky mingers. Muppet naff nutter pikey pillock plonker prat scrubber trollops uphill gardener twit knobheads. Piss off you bell end lazy sod skiver knob wazzock ninny berk airy-fairy ankle-biting arse-licker arsemonger chuffers, daft as a bush, dead from the neck up, gannet, gone to the dogs ligger like a dog with two dicks, mad as a bag of ferrets maggots who only bugger plug-ugly mingebags not batting on a full wicket.

I tried to translate this to American slang, and failed miserably.

Thank you, I laughed so hard

Ah, don't be so rough on the USA. We've got some colorful expressions of our own, especially in places like NYC, Texas and Philly.

Now let me clear my throat and switch to French:

Va te faire foutre grosse pute. Je te pisses à la raie [<- my personal favorite], sous-merde. Grosse cochonne. Enculé de pédé de sa mère la pute. Je t'emmerde. Je te nique ta race vieille pédale, nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère la chienne. T'es con comme un manche, tu pues du cul et ta mère suce comme un aspirateur. Cuve à foutre! Vieille trousse à bite! Je te chies dans l'œsophage! Enfant de viol! Quand ta mère est sorti des chiottes, elle était avec toi! Et appelle-la, que je recommences, tiens! Connard.

"T'es con comme un manche, tu pues du cul et ta mère suce comme un aspirateur."

Frenchie here, that one got me giggling, well played.

"You're an idiot as a handle, you stink ass and your mother sucks like a vacuum cleaner."

Apparently. However, "You're an idiot as a handle!" may well become my go-to insult...

Yeah it's a weird one. Why a broom-handle? Nobody knows. Doesn't matter.

"Con comme un manche" is stronger than "idiot like a handle" might first seem. Bête is idiot whereas con is etymologically equivalent to cunt. Semantically, however, it conveys something closer to fucking retard. "Asshat", maybe? Too funny. There's nothing funny about having to deal with a con.

Edit: tangentially related, but [0] this prank call is pure comedy and swearing gold. If you speak French and you haven't seen it, you're missing out. If you don't speak French, you get to hear a Corsican accent and Mediterranean rage (starts around 1:25). 10/10.

[0] https://youtu.be/RaNFPcZc9pY

Unfortunately, I don't speak French, so I wondered whether there was a translation of the video. As it turns out, YouTube has automatic sub-titling, and even automatic translation of sub-titles, from French into various languages - fortunately including English. But the text it produced, while entertaining in its own Dadaist way, was obscure and unhelpful. I guess machine translation still has a ways to go, particularly when dealing with enraged Corsicans!

Haha there's no way you can subtitle Corsicans!

I think this will, unfortunately, remain comprehensible only to Frenchman!

You for got one, espece d'un branleur...

Espèce de branleur. Couillon, va...

;)

"cheese eating surrender monkey", at least, was coined by an American (Ken Keeler, for The Simpsons), though I gather, yeah, it became most popular in re-use in the UK.

hehe love the brit slang :)

Indeed, swearing may literally be good for your health -- as an outlet for stress. In Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky writes:

We humans also deal better with stressors when we have outlets for frustration--punch a wall, take a run, find solace in a hobby...

A variant of Weiss's experiment uncovers a special feature of the outlet-for-frustration reaction. This time, when the rat gets the identical series of electric shocks and is upset, it can run across the cage, sit next to another rat and... bite the hell out of it. Stress-induced displacement of aggression: the practice works wonders at minimizing the stressfulness of a stressor. It's a real primate specialty as well. A male baboon loses a fight. Frustrated, he spins around and attacks a subordinate male who was minding his own business. An extremely high percentage of primate aggression represent frustration displaced onto innocent bystanders.

In that light, swearing might be seen as a more civilized form of displacing stress-induced aggression.

Edit: Also, what (the aptly monikered) @justratsinacoat said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12229408

Valorizing language is silly. I remember in like 5th grade they moved the goal posts on us and made 'sucks' a 'bad word'. I was so thoroughly confused. How did a previously okay word become bad?

They're tools in a box. They aren't inherently good or bad - the intent and meaning created by them are what matters.

I similarly think it should be impossible for a word to offend someone. I think it's possible for meaning to offend and really only if you respect the person enough to provide some weight to that meaning.

> I similarly think it should be impossible for a word to offend someone. I think it's possible for meaning to offend and really only if you respect the person enough to provide some weight to that meaning.

This strikes me as curious, as offense is a feeling, and thus not much "thinking" must be involved. If by 'should be impossible' you mean everyone should not allow themselves to be offended, that is a very different thing (and certainly requires first finding oneself offended, and then thinking about it).

I think the feeling is more a result of the perception. I.e someone forcefully communicates an idea you find painful to think about thus causing you pain. Better to confront the idea - understand and heal the trauma - rather than fixating on the mechanism of how you were reminded of it. You might find that the idea can no longer harm you - much less by someone trying to force it upon you - because you, at that point, understand it far better than they do.

No opinion to offer, but an observation - you've used some interesting words:

Forcefully; painful; pain; confront; trauma; harm; force.

Juxtaposed:

Forcefully - persuasively; energetically; vigorously

painful - uncomfortable; awkward; unpleasant

pain - discomfort; uneasy; disquiet

confront - address; meet; handle

trauma - effect; consequence; cause

harm - affect; move; influence

force - influence; change; affect

I say this seeing so much provocative and emotive language in a world where violence is needlessly celebrated and even elevated above accomplishments that further humanity, kindness, compassion, learning...

Being offended is a kind of feeling that you have to allow yourself to have. It's solely the responsibility of the person feeling offended, and frankly, I believe it's a sign of immaturity.

Actually feeling offended when a swear word is used as an offence against you is a mature sign that you understand social context.

I agree; bad words are bad because they have a negative feeling or concept associated with them (fear, disgust, racism etc..). They work on an emotional level, so you must make a conscious decision not to become offended even if the intent behind the words weren't hostile towards you.

Exactly. If I called a mate a "daft c!!t" (censored mainly because people still put that word, strangely, on a pedestal - if you do, I'd suggest not going to a bar in London on a Friday night...), it has a totally different concept to it than if I called a stranger who said something silly a "daft c!!t". Fundamentally it boils down to an empathy with context - everyone has a right to be offended by anything, but realistically the only time that has any impact societally is if someone is directly trying to offend you (which is rarely the case).

But the person speaking doesn't necessarily know what feelings or associations you give a word, so they can't be blamed for your reaction to them.

However, words do not exist in a vacuum. They have context when spoken or written. I suppose someone who was offended by the occurrence of the word "nigger" in the dictionary would be a little odd, but it would be quite normal for someone to be offended when called a nigger, or if someone described the president of the USA as that. In fact, I would not be surprised to find that my use of the word, even simply in this meta-discussion of its hypothetical usage, might offend someone...

If swear words weren't offensive they'd be useless.

>I similarly think it should be impossible for a word to offend someone. I think it's possible for meaning to offend and really only if you respect the person enough to provide some weight to that meaning.

Sure, it's usually not the word, but the meaning ("intent").

But seriously, if some stranger comes and tells you "fuck off idiot", e.g. in the supermarket isle, then you wont be offended, because you don't "respect" them to begin with?

I'll probably be scared of that level of aggression without other interaction, but not offended?

Anyone is welcome to call me a "rancid sack of mould covered dick cheese" if they really want to - but unless i care about their opinion, it's unlikely to offend

>I'll probably be scared of that level of aggression without other interaction, but not offended?

Why focus on the "other interaction" part? It's totally orthogonal to the point I was making. There could have BEEN other interaction, e.g. you might have blocked his cart in the supermarket aisle, or whatever.

The question is not if it was justified or remotely provoked response or not, but whether the receiver would be offended.

>but unless i care about their opinion, it's unlikely to offend

I doubt that really works that way in practice.

E.g. you're out and someone starts swearing at you, for whatever reason, and calling you various things in public. Sure, you could ignore it if it was just some crazy homeless person or something like that, but I doubt you'd ignore it if it was some other normal looking person.

Of course you could always say "yeah, I got angry, but that's because in this particular instance I cared about their opinion".

And how about them publicly calling e.g. you daughter names or something? You still wouldn't mind because you "don't care about their opinion"?

that's actually pretty interesting, i wouldn't be offended by a friend saying it but a stranger saying would piss me off, but even then it's not so much the words as the intent, i'd be just as offended if they'd said "thanks" in a sarcastic way to some imagined slight.

I thought that's why they work, and why so many of them poke at religious topics. I need a way to offend someone I've only just met that's guaranteed to work.

> and why so many of them poke at religious topics

Religion based swearing is more conscious, certainly on the part of the offended, or are at least environmentally primed. Something built up through the conditioning of society.

Out "built in" expletives tend to hark back to a time when our language was far simpler, covering the essentials of survival so more keyed to out physical needs: they are based on reproduction, bodily functions, and fighting.

>While sometimes viewed as lazy or boorish, swearing actually requires substantial verbal facility and skill. When used correctly, in other words, profanity is expressively complicated

I'm glad they pointed this out -- as I always say, swearing is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker. However, this article missed out on one of the more important beneficial aspects of swearing, namely pain relief [1] (I could have linked a study or two, but they can be found in the wiki article for once, and this is more concise). Of course, as interested parties will learn, its analgesic effect is most prominent in those who rarely swear, so, not that personally useful.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoalgesic_effect_of_swearing

Quentin Tarantino's characters do have quite the flair for using profanity. Those parts given to Samuel L. Jackson in particular always have such artful phrasing that at times it's arguably poetic.

It's a case study in how a few words have wildly different meanings and implications depending on the context they're used in and how they're applied to the topic at hand. Even the delivery has a huge impact on their meaning.

There's a big gulf between someone who just drops f-bombs for effect and someone who's using their familiar language to convey emotion and meaning that other words cannot possibly hope to measure up to.

But Samuel Jackson's diatribe isn't spontaneous. It would definitely be an awesome skill if you can come up with artful insults on the spot.

Is this comment considered as sarcastic or ironic? To be specific, the "inarticulate m*" bit.

I'm pretty sure s/he said "motherfucker". No need to censor swear words / insults, we're adults here, we can use mature language.

Ironic. It's deliberately contrarian and unexpected in the context in which it's presented.

I sometimes have trouble telling the difference these days.

It's a quote, although I don't know where from.

I find it funny an article on swearing is going to be discussed on a site where the general users will deride you and hold you as unprofessional for swearing on it.

Perhaps we should have an article on the healing power of humour next.

>general users will deride you and hold you as unprofessional for swearing on it.

The fuck is up with that bullshit anyway?

Not all therapeutic things are fit for use in technical discussion :)

We could test the bullshit assumption right here.

Well this comment wasn't down-voted, so it IS possible to swear. (When appropriate of course)

I've never seen anyone derided for tossing in the occasional expletive when describing extreme frustration, anger, joy, or other strong emotional reaction.

I think it's more just generally "dumb" and thoughtless swearing (or insulting/degrading comments directed at another commenter) that are frowned upon.

There's a time and a place for everything. I may not respond to you if you say, "Hey, hand me that fucking thing right there." instead of, "Hey, hand me that RS-232 cable." I simply don't have time or the give a crap to try and translate.

This is not an extreme example. It happens.

Time and place is key. Swearing is just another tool to express an emotion. A bug report comes in and you find and fix it in 5 minutes, "Hey I fixed that bug, fix is going out." A different bug report comes in that you stay up 24 hours finding and fixing, "Motherfucker! I finally found and fixed that issue that was fucking with our payment system. Have I mentioned that programming is fucking horse shit? I'm going to sleep now."

While HN is publicly searchable I don't imagine many people will swear. It's not only the users here that could read them; it's anyone who Googles your username.

That would be true if the words "fuck" and "shit" were not considered swear words :).

Swearing is like putting a spice on your sentence. Overdo it and you'll come across too bold and brash. Use is carelessly for anything and it loses its significance. But use it just on things that deserve emphasis, and it shines in a pretty good way.

Stephen Fry, whose intellect and vocabulary are way beyond mine, on swearing. The bleeping on the second video is so deliciously germane.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_osQvkeNRM

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ0Ny6WhfLU

I thought you were going to post a segment from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Planet_Word wherein there is a part where there is a test on resisting physical pain between Brian Blessed and Stephen Fry. The point is people who swear a lot seem to have a lower pain threshold.

There's a SpongeBob SquarePants episode that covers this. "Sailor Mouth". Highly recommended. The swear words are bleeped out with dolphin chirping and other maritime sound effects.

Patrick: Hmm... [dolphin chirp]! Oh, hey! I think I know what that means. That's one of those sentence enhancers.

SpongeBob: Sentence enhancers?

Patrick: You use them when you want to talk fancy. You just sprinkle it over anything you say, and Wham-o! You've got yourself a spicy sentence sandwich!

http://spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Sailor_Mouth_(transcript)

My username checks out.

Fuckin' oath swearing is good for you.

I'm British, raised by an ex-military Grandfather turned Civvy Engineer who ate his cornflakes with a side of profanity and then I. As a young adult, I moved to Australia. I swear alot. Even for fucking Australians.

It's the perfect stress release mechanism.

'Why the fuck doesn't that work? Why the fuck DOES that work?'

Well, 'fuck' is a linguistic universal joint - it's probably the most flexible word in the language.

Coincidentally, it gets used a lot when interacting with literal universal joints:

Joint makes noise..."fuck"

Needle bearings get ground to dust..."fuck"

Clips won't come out..."fuck"

Cap is stuck in the yoke..."fuck"

Stuck cap explodes when you get it un-stuck..."fuck"

Yoke is bent while removing cap..."fuck"

New joint didn't come with clips..."fuck"

Clips that were laying around won't fit..."fuck"

Cap falls off when you don't want it to..."fuck"

Needle bearings come out during assembly..."fuck"

Joint + yokes exceed max operating angle near their max torque load...BANG "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck" BANG,BANG,BANG,BANG,BANG,BANG, "FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!

As demonstrated by Bunk & McNulty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lElf7D-An8

We're all familiar with the history of the f word here?

https://youtu.be/FvPbxZmZxZ8

Earlier today I realised that I had forgotten a train ticket (along with other documents) in a restaurant, so I ended up missing my train because I had to go back and collect my documents.

As soon as I realised this was the case, I knew it was too late for me. In the spur of the moment, I shouted "fuck!" and people were looking at me. It felt so right at the time, as if I deserved to swear. My mind had been assailed by my senses.

Many of the situations in which we want to swear can be counteracted by mindfulness of the phenomena surrounding you. When you remember not to get caught up in your internal world of judgements, and remember to guard your senses (including the mind as one of our senses) then swearing becomes a lot less necessary to deal with a situation.

Ideally we'd like to not have to deal with situations, because the whole mental component of the situation is missing. Mindfulness gets us there, whereas swearing does not.

I like to think a bit before swearing at work, so instead of going "it's shit" like ol' Steve did, I prefer "it's suboptimal" or "there's room for improvement". But in a sarcastic tone, which makes it funny. I hope.

I love a good swear as much of any of you mangy pissflaps, but here's a gold example of how implied rudeness can be funny too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AXPnH0C9UA

If you like filthy British humour and want to add to your swearing vocabulary, get the original Roger's Profanisaurus [1].

There are newer editions with more words added, but the original edition has the highest concentration of funny, in my opinion. If you get/have the hardcover edition, look for the easter egg under the back cover.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Rogers-Profanisaurus-Viz/dp/075221507...

Meh. I swear. In front of my son (now 15). A lot. I was hoping for better arguments for feeling good about my swearing.

This comment, necessarily, has coarse language.

When i first started programming i worked with a guy who retired about a year later, Jon. He swore constantly, and was extremely colorful in his mastery of that particular skill.

One day I asked Jon about it, he told me a story from when he was much younger. He was leaving the house for work, with the suit and briefcase and everything, his son was 5 or 6 and had slept in. Jon is at the car door, his son comes running out to say goodbye to his daddy. So it's this perfect late 60's early 70's scene, practically a rockwell painting. Dad in a suit, mom in an apron, son in pajamas. Jon's off to continue the space age, with computers.

Jon's son stands on the porch and hollers "Goodbye cocksucker!"

I know i don't do justice to that story, i was practically in tears when he told me. Anyway, he spoke a bit about humor in the face of stress, how it can bring joy in the darkest situations.

He absolutely would not be tolerated these days, but i liked the guy. He was genuinely funny. His swearing was so shocking it cut through your defenses, and more or less forced a laugh. Anyway, i'd encourage you to flavor your swears with ridiculous overly specific additions. That guy's not a shit, he's a steaming hairy flaming pile of whale shit. I don't have Jon's gift. But you get the idea. Chevy Chase in christmas vacation is a great example.

This is what gets me with some 'anti-swearers' though - the concern is on the taboo word, not the taboo intent. "A steaming hairy flaming pile of whale's leavings" is not swearing, but is saying exactly the same thing. Same intent, but not with the taboo word, though.

Well, i don't really know. There are some bible verses that call out the use of filthy language and corrupt words. I think shit was actually the english word for feces, and got a bad rap over time. Perhaps as technology improved, more and more people didn't have to actually deal with shit and wanted a more high falutin term.

I think there's some value in limiting use of words. Why would you call someone whale leavings? Maybe he cut you off in traffic? Maybe he killed your dog? It can lead to lazy storytelling. As others mentioned, they're like seasoning. They should be used to add weight to a coherent idea, not as a substitute for thought.

A whole article dedicated to exploring the apparent benefits of swearing and not a single mention of its perceived cathartic effects?

I'm a bit disappointed to say the least. Anyhow, yeah swearing can help alleviate internal pain or stress for some people but you should use with moderation as it follows the law of diminishing returns and when you go overboard with it, it becomes increasingly useless.

----------------------------------------------------

“Bad words,” Adams writes, “are unexpectedly useful in fostering human relations because they carry risk….We like to get away with things and sometimes we do so with like-minded people.”

Anyone have any idea what is this guy talking about?

I read this part many times but I couldn't get the "romantic" view that he holds for profanity and obscenities.

For those who are not very creative with their expletives, there are plenty of resources out there. A quick search led me to this... http://foulomatic.hnldesign.nl/

The problem is that swearing is losing its strength, since everybody already uses interjects like "f* it" and "wtf" all the time.

And very often they've no idea that they're swearing. 'Oh My God' was insanely popular in the 1990s even amongst people who had no belief in a deity, which really annoyed me even though I don't identify as a Christian.

I even remember the non-Human character Kira in Deep Space 9 being assigned it in dialogue, it was really jarring. It's as if it had just been reduced to a sequence of syllables and the writers didn't think about what it meant.

It's as if it had just been reduced to a sequence of syllables

And for all practical purposes, it has. Sometimes, sentences used very often lose their meaning and become interjections. "Goodbye" comes from "God be with ye", and of course it's used by atheists as well.

>'Oh My God' was insanely popular in the 1990s even amongst people who had no belief in a deity, which really annoyed me even though I don't identify as a Christian

OMG is not a swear word though -- it's just an expression of awe/amazement/surprise/etc.

It's an oath, isn't it? So literally, at least, it is swearing.

http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/a5PmrLq_700b.jpg

(Or that would be, if it even was an oath. But "Oh my god" is NOT an oath. "On my God", or "In the name of my god" would be that).

Oh, really? I thought it was the "_my_ God" part that was swearing an oath.

Not every phrase with "my god" in it is an oath.

Unless if you swear (promise to do something) to your god (or on your god's name).

OMG is not that different from "oh man!" in use. It's for surprise. How does "swearing an oath" would be related to being surprised?

I see "Oh, _my_ God" as a statement of allegiance, as opposed to just, say, "Oh, God."

I see. I see it more as kind of call (in a "vocative case").

In the sense that you find something surprising, and ask for your God (as when you fear something, etc).

I sometimes think we need religion to make sure our words keep their meaning. And I am not religious.

Why? Language evolves naturally over time, trying to hold back that process seems a little regressive. The obvious example is the word "cool". I'm not sure there's any real benefit in holding its meaning to be "something that's cold".

It's a valid argument but in the big scheme of things it doesn't convince me. The same argument can be made for a wide array of things that are considered undesirable like, say, xenophobia [0].

I have definitely never sworn in my native language, I might have used a soft swear word in English in text a few times just due to my ignorance.

[0] Of course I recognize that xenophobia has more of a concrete "victim".

This article reminds me of http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151109-english-speakers-o... Its funny how colloquiasm also applies to swearing in one languages v.s another

What a load of crap. It's good because it carries 'risk' and can be used as a sign of trust? In what universe does swearing carry 'risk'? Might a puritan cultural thing. In which case the 'benefits' probably don't carry over to less puritan cultures.

Vulgarity is the fool's fig leaf.

Fuck yeah!

Ah, fuck this bullshit. :D

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