11:18pm October 5, 2014

Cussing: Your favorite cuss words? Your favorite minced oaths?

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ll cuss as long as it’s not in front of people who are known to be offended by it. (And then whether I’ll cuss in front of them is a calculated decision about whether they’re worth offending.)

But I actually find minced oaths much more creative than cuss words a lot of the time.

My favorite everyday cuss word is fuck. Not just fuck though. Clusterfuck. Fuckton. Metric fuckton. I really like metric fuckton, it’s so precise. I like the versatility of the word fuck and the many ways people have modified it over the years. I know it’s considered a shockingly bad word in most ‘polite company’, and I know to avoid it in certain company, but I really really love this word and especially its many variations.

My favorite minced oath, though, is dagnabbit. There’s just something deliciously fun to say about dagnabbit. Daggggg-nabbit.

What’s a minced oath? Read the Wikipedia article, which is great, and then get back to me on your favorite outright cuss words, and your favorite minced oaths. Basically though a minced oath is a word people use instead of actually cussing. So you’d say dagnabbit instead of Goddammit. Or you’d say sugar instead of shit. I can always tell parents and childcare workers by the frequency by which they say 'sugar’ and 'fudge’ instead of 'shit’ and 'fuck’.

In the Wikipedia article, you’ll mostly find references to archaic minced oaths, most of which aren’t used anymore. But there are tons and tons of minced oaths that we use every day without even realizing it. Darn is a minced oath for damn. And that’s just the most obvious. They’re all over the place if you look, and they’ll often pop into your head when you’ve just stubbed your toe and there’s a bunch of kids around and you don’t want to unleash the string of cuss words your mouth is preparing for you.