Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com