Stuff like “god damn”, “fucking hell”, etc. Anything that stems from religious sources. That includes fudged varieties like “jeez/geez” and “heck”.
And to clarify, this isn’t some attempt to avoid blasphemy or anything. I’m not particularly religious and would rather rewrite the neural pathways for those “defaults”, but haven’t been able to come up with satisfactory alternatives so far.
*To clarify further, I’m all good with most other curses (shit, fuck, ass, etc). I’m not trying to be inoffensive, just non-religious.
My favorite come from one of my favorite TV shows, Red Dwarf.
Smeg
Farscape also had a whole made up vocabulary like “frell” and “dren”.
“Aw biscuits”
Avis: Vous avez été exilé de [email protected]
Notice: You have been exiled from [email protected]
Tabarnak !
If anyone wants an example of Québecois swearing, I recommend checking out Lorembarnak. It’s lorem ipsum but tabarnak-ified.
Just say “fuck.”
Oh, I do. Shit, fuck, ass, etc. No problem with those, just don’t like religion hogging up neural pathways.
So replace “fudge” with “fuck.” Unfuck it all.
“Fudged” in the body wasn’t a swear replacement. I was using the word as a word.
I didn’t even realize that, I was just using it as an example.
My point is: don’t replace bullshit words with other bullshit words. Just use the normal words and stop pretending. Say fuck. Say shit. Say hell damn ass cunt. Tell anyone who decides to act offended to get over themselves.
tl;dr grow up.
I’ll admit I lurked a bit to see if you’re US- based and it looks like you are. Maybe instead of “Jesus Christ” you can use “Abraham Lincoln?”
Like “Abraham fucking Lincoln in a cabin made of shit logs” could be a satisfactory expression of frustration.
Any name you can remember easily could work; Billy Crystal, Woody Guthrie, Greta Thunberg, even your neighbors or pets’ names.
The others will be a bit tough since they’re so ingrained in our culture but depending how “non-religious” you intend to be you can switch to “curse/hex” and wean yourself off of that into something more secular ¯\(ツ)/¯
I think you may be the only commenter who actually read the post.
I actually LOL’d at Billy Crystal
I got tired of trying, live in the Bible belt and grew up with all those words as my lexicon.
God damn, oh god, Jesus christ, etc. If anything feels good because religious people dislike it lol
Frack. Dank Farrik. Sleemo. Kriff.
Here’s a dictionary of them. - https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Fictional_English_curse_words
Gorram it I knew this post made me think of Firefly for some reason.
I like the in-universe swears from some of Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy novels: Rust (rusting, rusted) and storms (storming) come to mind.
A québecoise roommate of mine got her whole office yelling “chicken FRITE” (fried chicken in franglais).
“What the shoes” is kind a fun one. I’ll also yell “fudge knuckles!” which doesn’t really mean anything but is pretty satisfying to say.
The Wheel of Time has some great ones too.
Blood and bloody ashes
Mother’s milk in a cup
Son of a goat’s left stone.
See also: Battlestar Galactica
Oh and Firefly, although a lot of that is in Mandarin.
German has a rich vocabulary of non-religious swears:
https://dein-sprachcoach.de/schimpfwoerter-jetzt-wird-es-schmutzig/
Excellent
Geiler Scheiß!
For once I’m glad my fellow Dutchman haven’t colonized this thread yet, and instead we get a German invasion.
Kanker!
Could you replace them with the swear words you don’t mind saying? Or am I not understanding what you’re looking for?
e.g. “For Christ sake” can be replaced with, “for fuck sake”.
Fuck’s sake*
Hank Green made a video about this exact phrase
TIL
Vlog bros are my heroes.
Gyatt damn is my latest favorite. It sounds close enough but is absolutely absurd when you think about it. “Thick-ass damn!”
AFAIK, “gyatt” is from the way people say “g-d damn”. As in, it’s what certain people said when they saw the thing the word has now been associated with.
What about fictional or ancient religious swears?
- by the power of Ra!
- may Zeus grant mercy
- by Grabthar’s hammer!
- thank Thor
When I’m in a gaming VC I sometimes swap in setting-appropriate swears.
What about political figures?
- thanks Obama
What about cringy internet/gaming references?
- God damn -> mods ban
- thank god -> thanks chat
Well, boy howdy!
Alan Davies from QI taught me that instead of “shut the fuck up!” one can say “shut the front door!”
My mom always hated god damnit so I started saying “Dang-ol’ dingus dangit” and it’s stuck for half my life.
Kid friendly, has a satisfying rhythm, silly enough to difuse some of the frustration, and usually gets a laugh
SomethingInGERMAN!!!
Okay, little backstory here. When I was growing up, there was this fighting game called Karnov’s Revenge, and it was the 90s, so the characters said little 2 second phrases that more or less sounded like words. My friends and I were fascinated by it, ended up adding many of those phrases to our vocabulary. One of those characters was a giant German wrestler named Marstorius - and some of his phrases were just incomprehensible. So we ended up just yelling “SomethingInGERMAN” when he would pull of his big wresting move. No, not a translation, no actual German words were injured. And boyo did that stick, still say it to this day.
