"Dadgum" is also big among the Fess Parker co-players.
We're becoming sweary asf.
I thought it was af.
If you compare that map to a map of population density, you kind of wonder how much of the map isn't just filled in because some kid in high school likes to say "shit" on Twitter.
I'm waiting until the inevitable Language Log post before making any comment on the substance.
Language Log, Star Date 156245.223: I have just encountered a strange new planet where people say "Cunt" in place of most common and proper nouns. Going to investigate with First Officer Spock and three extras in red shirts.
Is 'fuckboy' swearing? I mean, it incorporates an obscenity, but I had gotten the impression that it was more a word denoting an identifiable social phenomenon than an epithet. Come to think, I guess I'd put 'douchebag' in the same category.
Also, what the hell is up with the West Coast and 'faggot'?
They're a potty mouthed bunch in Maine, aren't they?
7: I assumed it was in-group usage.
Oh, that makes perfect sense and I should have thought of it. But then I would think of it as dropping out of the category of swears.
The good people at Summer's Eve probably feel the same about douchebag.
And it's funny, even for ingroup usage, that is regional. I'd double-take at someone saying 'faggot' around here even if I knew they were gay and using it as an ingroup member -- not that I'd be offended under those circumstances once I had a moment to think, but I don't hear it used like that.
But I agree with your point. I haven't heard it used in maybe five or six years. My guess would be not ingroup usage, but high school-aged fuckheads.
Oh, that makes perfect sense and I should have thought of it. But then I would think of it as dropping out of the category of swears.
The study methodology doesn't distinguish between vulgar and non-vulgar usage.
It makes sense to me for the same reason you see "hell" and "damn" in the Bible Belt. They're swearing in such a way as to give the most offense to the locals.
Yeah, there's a pretty well known phenomenon that swearing in Northern European (broadly protestant) languages tends to be scatological while in Southern European (broadly Catholic) languages it tends to be religio-familial.
Perfectly perched in the middle, Switzerland has cheese-based swearing.
I'm most curious about the cunt cluster around Bugtussle KY.
Sure looks like Mormons or their superculture prefer "crap" to stronger swears.
Big on 'slut' as well. Which is fascinatingly distinct from 'whore', regional-usage-wise.
When my son was little, he pronounced "horror" with a very indistinct second syllable. This was awkward.
The c-word in New England is surely due to stronger regional ties to Europe, much like their lack of support for the War of 1812.
Interesting that Philadelphians like "bitch" while New Yorkers don't. Especially since Philly's usage is contiguous with the South.
I don't naturally use any good swears in Irish (as opposed to Hiberno-English), since my father didn't use anything but the mildest ones in front of us. The modern online dictionary translates nearly all of them as "golly" except for one which probably corresponds to "damn!". Swear words are mostly religious-ish, with invocations of the devil and of the old pagan god Crom as the strongest. Words meaning "fuck" are not curses at all but "fuck" has been borrowed wholesale into the vernacular at this stage.
The oddest exclamation is a phrase entirely in English, "by dad" which no-one except slightly old-fashioned Irish speakers would use.
I had no idea "Crom" existed outside of Conan the Barbarian.
"by dad" or "bedad" is the sort of thing that I thought only comic 19th century stage Irishmen said.
And I am of course delighted that people still swear by Crom.
Is it actually a god, or short for Cromwell?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crom_Cruach
Now I'm wondering if there was actually a garden-variety snake cult that was surprisingly multi-ethnic.
Though your explanation is better and I recommend it to Tim Powers for his novel about the mystical secret history of the Troubles.
26: I see "foc" a lot on Twitter, which I've been assuming is that loan.
Putting "golly" into Teanglann gets me "Mhiricín!" which looks suspiciously similar to the word for American, with a diminutive.
For "Dar Crom" it glosses it as "By Jove!" which is just so charming.
Oh please give us some good Crom swears!
30: I mean, does the swear actually point at the god?
It also has "In ainm Crom" which is glossed as "By the name of Providence" but clearly should be IN THE NAME OF CROM. Can't wait to hear what emir has.
Curiously: "Domhnach Crom Dubh", the last Sunday in July. Or the Sunday of Black Crom. The Black Sunday of Crom[, the Merciless]? I haven't yet grokked the associativity of the genitive.
"Valor pleases you, Crom. So grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!"
Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!
Crom doesn't protect his worshipers from being pwned, so to hell with him.
5: I'm intrigued to watch this episode and find out whether they're in Scotland or the Antipodes.
Conan became a king by his own hand, if you know what I mean.
But he wasn't master of his domain, if you know what I mean.
I don't have anything further beyond "In ainm Chroim" (I've never heard "dar Crom" in the wild but it seems ... perfectly cromulent (I swear I started to type that before I noticed).
Teanglann and in particular FGB is authoritative for the language and its grammar as of 1977 and great for all the example phrases and sentences. Foclóir.ie has a lot of the more modern and slangy usages.
Running "by dad" through the corpus at gaois.ie confirms my suspicion that is is mainly used by oul' fellas in the West.
Domhnach Crom Dubh in this case I think is Sunday of Black Crom - what you'd never guess is that the same date is also known as "Reek Sunday" or Domhnach na Cruaiche, the day when Croagh Patrick is climbed. The inference is that the Christians took over the feast day and the mountain.
Crom seems to be the only pre-Christian god to have survived in folklore but I suspect this to be because the monks included him in their stories as a nasty contrast to the new kinder religion.
I can't identify what "muiricín" is (unless it's a kind of fish) but I doubt it has anything to do with "Meireacánach". Perhaps like "muise" it's a euphemistic version of Muire.
"By Jove" is used to gloss any amount of exclamations in the older dictionaries. It always makes me think of the grown-up Peter and Edmund in The Last Battle.
Oh, dear God, I got totally lost in the link, and only surfaced, gasping for breath, after finding a headline attributed to the Sunday Sport -- "Sex with Greggs pasty boiled my bellend"
I would not, however, wear the T shirt. That's carrying the joke too far.
"Dadgum" is of course only "god damn" euphemized and backwards. They should be ashamed!
Also strange pride that New England is super-red for all the worst ones super-blue for the wimpy ones: "Gosh!"
Dadgum is probably Wrigley's. I don't what the kids chew these days. I expect they're too busy vaping.