Forbidden words: How we navigate linguistic taboos 

Honestly I use H-E-Double Hockeysticks when I want to go a step further than saying hell but not quite to “FUCK!” Yet, very good in between word

As a Minnesotan, I enjoy that one too. First of all, hockey. Second of all, I like the implication the even SPELLING the word 'hell' would be horrible, so you have to use a stand-in for the _letters_ to keep your soul pure😂

Heck, that's a good one!

As a Christian in the millennial age group, I heard this one a lot. 😅

I remember a friend calling me to ask "Do you want to come over and watch H-E-Double-Hockeysticks Boy?" and I was so confused, she wouldn't elaborate so I had no clue what that meant til I actually went over and saw the cover lol.

I wonder if this will lead to a whole new treadmill where online platforms start to also demonetize these words, leading to even newer ones as content creators try to stay ahead of the censors.

​@@BlackTomorrowMusicThe demonetization happened because advertisers demanded it The advertisers demanded it because they were concerned it would affect their reputation. I think Google would be slow or will never catch on, because it won't be necessary. "Seggs" and "unalive" don't give them as bad of a reputation when their ads are in front of such a video. Also consider the most inappropriate "Elsa and Spiderman" content has been part of the front page for years now. As long as you can put up a facade of kid friendliness, you're golden

And Grape for ... and calling people coconuts (where they used to call them oreos.)

​@@BlackTomorrowMusic it almost certainly will, given enough time. Google will react once tge first advettisers start complaining)

a video talking about that on his channel would be his own take on the movie inception 😂

@@sovietbear1917 that’s delightful

'Curse you and your antics!' is a fun one I've used jokingly in the workplace before

I don't want to use religious exclamations. I replaced Jesus Christ with Cheesus Crisp. In my native Polish I use euphemisms that were invented in my family (grandpa, whom I never knew - you ruled :D ).

I love it

@@marikothecheetah9342 I would totally worship Cheesus Crisp, he sounds UHHHHMAZING

@@johnlumsden9102 I know someone like that, but they’ll casually drop what they think is the ineffable name of gd and it’s just a lot to process. I jump every time

I heard “foda-se” from watching a Brazilian series on Netflix and then asked my Portuguese teacher to explain the meaning. She brought a great big grin 😄 to my face.

I live in Portugal and am learning Portuguese. It is interesting to me that in all the other languages I've studied, swear words very quickly come up and people enjoy teaching them to you. I have not had that happen once in my two years here. I still don't know any swear words in Ptese. I have a dog and only recently learned cocô, the word for poop!

@@andreaeisenberg8851 Shame, swear words are the backbone of any language 😆

same with me in spanish lol i think it's because cursing is easy to master since it's obvious and memorable and there aren't that many words. it's like mastering the vocabulary necessary to play chess or something

Strangely, with me it's the reverse. I curse less in foreign languages. Maybe because the emotional distance to what I'm saying is bigger.

The number of times I have said "cheese and jam" or "cheese and crackers" in front of my kids is mind boggling 😂 My daughter has taken to using "dodgy" even though she was born and raised in Maryland too, which cracks me up. That and "for real life?"

TP is now BT 😂

One of my teachers told us to say "toilet tissue" instead of "toilet paper." We all ignored the advice.

@@angreagachAt least 'toilet tissue' could sound fun to say because they alliterate - strict, the stressed parts of both words start with the same sound -

@@Reubentheimitator6572 Reminds me of a scene in the movie Monkey Business: Cary Grant tells Marilyn Monroe to say,, "terrify." She does. Then he tells her to say, "tissue." She does. Then he tells her to say them together. She says, "terrify tissue" and he says "No!" and kisses her.

The only dysphemism I’ve ever heard for toilet paper is “shit tickets”

especially if you're a kiwi ( small e is pronounced very similarly to small i)

You can always just shout out the name of the famous medieval Arabic philosopher, Suq Madik.

My Mom used to say “riding the cotton horse”

definitely “period” is a euphemism that became taboo! i’ve heard older women (like older boomers or silent generation) say “monthly” as a noun. Anne Lister in the 1830s wrote a euphemism for it in her diary, she called it her cousin, as in “found my cousin had come this morning”. and her wife Anne Walker referred to her’s as “Monsieur”. i love Cher in Clueless saying “i was surfing the crimson wave, i had to make a mad dash to the ladies’”

While we're on the topic of "ladies' words" (lol), I'm always annoyed that so many people refer to a woman's entire genitalia as "her vagina." I don't know why, but "vulva" is apparently a forbidden word. I hope I'm even allowed to post this comment since I un-euphemized a body part!

In the North of England, women will sometimes refer to being “unwell”. This confused me when, shortly after I moved here to work as a GP, when one patient said: “Doctor, I feel really poorly when I’m unwell”.

I've often heard, "moon sickness"

“Different cognitive abilities” and “cognitively impeded” are two I’ve seen recently

@@languagejones6784 'learning disability' is the last I have seen

@@fakkelplemp "learning disability" is more common in the UK from what I've seen in disability studies circles. In the US, "learning disability" and "intellectual disability" tend to be different things (with learning disability meaning things like dyslexia & dyscalcula, and intellectual disability referring to Down Syndrome, some traumatic brain injuries, etc)

pour one out for the word "special"

@@jampharos as a disabled person who was a disabled kid, I loathe the word special in that context

some architects are just weird

I had a southern mom tell me that her kid "used the bathroom in his pants." It wasn't until years later that she meant a specific kind of bathroom accident. My husband from the same town uses the same euphemism sometimes.

Not sure what age you are or where you are from, but that is completely normal English to me. What would you say? "Defecating"?

@@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh Depends on the context. If it is a story about a child, "pooping"/"peeing" might be appropriate. If it's a news article about someone who escaped a mental institute, I'd say "defecating" would be better. If it is a comedy about a dog going wild, "sh*tting" would fit.

@@SZvenM Well yes, of course. But in a normal context that isn't one of those more specific ones you mentioned, I think "went to the bathroom" is what I would say and expect. "Oh, I don't have to go. I just went."

Or relatedly people will replace "beschissen" (shitty) with "bescheiden" (modest)

@@timseguine2 Bescheiden is great, because people use it even in professional settings (with colleagues, not customers) and everyone knows you mean “shitty” but it literally means “humble/modest.” “The PowerPoint slides he made were … modest.”

The Germans we have met seem very free about certain words in English that are curse words. I even heard teachers use them in a speech for a graduation the other day in Germany. 😄

@@Bmonkeygurl Germans don’t understand the impact that certain curse words have in English, both because they weren’t socialized in an English-speaking society, and because certain words like “sh*t” in German (“scheiße”) don’t always hit as hard as they do in English.

@@Bmonkeygurl Yes, the German taboo on fecal language is much lower than in English.

This is a perfect example of taboo avoidance for social censure…in the form of demonitization

Grape, too.

This started on RU-vid

I'm always wondering how much those words would actually get censored and how much of this is just panopticon self-censorship

@@decare696 It's necessary on TikTok, and to some extent Twitter -- on the latter, there was famously a wave of weird bans. You were ok if no one hated you, but if anyone reported your account in bad faith, it would get skimmed by a bot looking for words that indicated you were breaking rules. Gonna "Kill some time" between classes? Threatening Violence! Banned. It's not a real thing anywhere else that I know of.

what is the original phrase its replacing? does it refer to hanging?

@@selmiespot I assumed it was “go f-k yourself” but I could be wrong.

In a “shut the front door” vein.

I did not understand that section of the video AT ALL. What was he actually saying?

​@@wirrbelThe N

@@wirrbel I think this was a clever attempt to invoke the McGurk effect. It certainly worked on me.

It's a neighborly day in this beauty-wood - I got this from my neighbor!! That one day Mr Rogers got high...

@@wirrbel Dr. Jones mentioned the "hard R" which refers to two different ways of pronouncing the N-word, specifically whether it's pronounced with a rhotic -er (the "hard R") or a non-rhotic -ah ending. the non-rhotic version is the respectful in-group version used between AAE speakers. the rhotic version is mostly used by bigots. Dr. Jones further explained that when using "neighbor" as a substitute word, you can keep the same "hard R" distinction, pronouncing it either "neighba" (respectful) or "neighber" (rude). thus the joke that Mr Rogers's pronunciation is "not cool"

Underrepresented, definitely. Most of us Gentiles know some Yiddish words from Hollywood, but Ladino we have no effing clue...

In Irish they are called "na daoine maithe" (the good people). 'Fair folk' is some English poetic innovation.

@@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh ooop, that's really obvious in retrospect, sorry/thank you for the correction!

@@tharo4390 it just means it's even more similar to Ladino than you thought!

Ladino is so cool. Check out the work of Dr. Devin Naar at the University of Washington.

We also say "mercredi!" in France to avoid "merde" :)

@@simonr-vp4if mardi would make so much more sense, though :P

@@marikothecheetah9342 Actually in Quebec, since they do not say "merde" but "marde", the equivalent is mardi" !

@@simonr-vp4if thanks! It's so interesting to know. :)

@@simonr-vp4if LOL 😂 I didn't know that. It seems so cute, kinda like my mom exclaiming "Sugar" when she is angered or frustrated and others would have said "Sh*t".

@@soorian6493 cotdamb still going strong!

Did he got out of the trouble?

Also reminiscent of how us Australians speak 😂😂😂

The F word is baked into the Canadian lexicon...

I recently listened to audiobooks of the Stormlight Archives - 4 55-hour novels and 2 8-hour novellas and now "storms!" is starting to grow on me as a curse.

And, of course, you have "Belgium," which is only used by loose-tongued people like Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy universe. What a turlingdrome!

Oh felgercarb - I forgot all about Battlestar Galactica!! Mormons have the best euphemisms, mothertrucker!!

@@seandmr “chucklehead” while tamer, is one of my favorite new yorkisms

The poor man has been dutiful and suffered long enough. I don’t need to insult him.

@@lynnebattaglia-triggs1042 Poor? He has a gold carriage, and a gold hat.

and the french always have to make it either about women or about religion

Sexual swears are not the most taboo in English- racial swears are. When people say “suck my dick” or “eat my ass” they risk losing a certain level of respect. When someone, the wrong type especially, uses a racial slur like the N word they risk being socially condemned and ostracized to the point of it essentially ruining their life. That’s MUCH more power. Keep in mind that while typing this reflexively as a native English speaker I made no attempt to conceal or ameliorate the word “dick” but when it came to the N word I don’t even write it out when referring to it, using a euphemism instead even when not using it to consciously demean someone. That’s a sign of an incredibly socially powerful piece of language.

@@therisingtithes the Cohen brothers evidently insisted they do the replacements for the Big Lebowski airing on TV. “This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!”

@@languagejones6784 I like the cable-TV edit of the Sam Jackson movie "Snakes on a Plane." "I have had it with these monkey-fightin' snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!!"

i kind of like “motherlover” and “motherlovin” even better

what about "the tradesman's entrance"?

Well, it's inherently dehumanizing in ways that most of the examples given aren't.

It's very Newspeak. Double plus ungood

That's actually a great point. A lot of terms for horrible acts were changed online so people wouldn't get demonetized and these changes became commonplace. Game-end, unalive, pdf, grape.

We already had other, far more respectful and less nonsensical euphemisms for death and killing in common use in English. This one originally came from a joke about censorship. That's actually what bothers me so much about these "TikTok Euphemisms", they started as jokes and therefore feel inherently nonsensical.

I have kids so I use "son of a biscuit" and "mother of pearl" (or try to, lol)

Tabernouche. 🙂 30 years ago I lived with some Africans who addressed each other with the N word e.g. Yo ******.

Ha yeah, the fact that we use "tabarouette / tabarnouche / ta' " to avoid saying "tabarnak" is hilarious when you think about it, since there's nothing actually wrong with going full circle and saying "tabernacle" in its original form!

Alright, if you were curious about specifics, here are a few examples of Canadian French swear words, but you really shouldn't start using them. No, not because you will sound impolite, but because misusing then is going to mark you as a disrespectful foreigner. They are the final boss to master before for can pass as a local. The most common ones are butcherings of the French words for the host, the Christ, the chalice and the tabernacle: osti, crisse, câlisse, tabarnak. The shorter ones can be used as expletives more casually, the longer ones imply anger. All of them can be butchered up even more to form euphemisms: estifi, crime, câline, tabarnouche. But again, most of these butchering carry their own connotations. My father is the only person I ever heard say "tabarneu" as a mild expletive to express slight surprise, disapproval and maybe even empathy, as in "tabarneu, il s'est pas manqué" (literally: "he did not miss himself", said when referring to someone who tripped and fell in a way that looked particularly bad). And of course, we can't mention these words without talking about how some of them can be verbed, adverbed, composed and so on, allowing for colorful phrases like: "Ma blonde vient de me crisser-là, faque câlisse-moi patience avant que je sois en tabarnak après toi en plus mon osti." I would translate that as: "My girl just dumped me, so leave me the fuck alone before I get fucking mad at you too, you prick." But of course, it sounds very silly if I don't replace the swear words with English equivalents, and instead try to butcher up English religious terms in their place: "My girl just Christ-ed up with me, so chalice-me some peace before I get tabernacled at you too, my host." 😂 Fun-but-sad fact: The Canadian French dub of Rick and Morty was cancelled after a single season, likely because it arrived here way too late and people had already seen it in English, but possibly because they were too creative when making Rick swear. To me, Rick in English comes off as mean and irreverent, but in Canadian French he sounds like a rude uncle from a remote village who uses swear words you've never heard in the city. He sounds less like a smart asshole and more like a rube. It's subtle, but it's the kind of thing you might not realize when writing the script. Shame, the acting wasn't bad.

@@DominoPivot Osti de crisse de tabernak! Yeah I lived in Montreal for two years, and I wouldn’t use the Quebec swear words except tabernouche or taberouette. I only use merde in French. Swear words are too complex, one needs to be a very good judge of context and audience to use them safely. I found Quebec swear words very funny at first.

Dr. Jones a fait une video sur le sujet de la langue francais Quebecois! Il a bien apprendre parler votre langue et je pense qu'il a aussi utilisier ces mots. ;)

As a rather sheltered 11 year old, this was how I came across the taboo term. I had a music lesson every Tuesday, and the teacher said ‘see you next Tuesday’. Cue scandalised silence and much confusion on my end.

Actually it is English that uses “Right” for the opposite of both Wrong and Left. Derecho in Spanish means straight ahead. Derecha is Right, and it is only the opposite of Izquierda.

​@@davidbangsdemocracy5455 English, and Finnish, and probably other languages have the same word for "right" side with right as in correct / just / "the right to do something" etc. A right angle is exactly 90 angle. Upright, straight. In Finnish oikea is right side, but it also means "real", "true", "correct" and oikeus is justice, oikeudet is rights as in human rights, or everymansrights ;) In Spanish there are also "derechos humanos" for human rights. But you're right about the derecho vs derecha, that was my mistake, and I was only speculating about the opposite thing. But there seems to be some connection with those words in Spanish too. "Straight" direction is associated with morally straight as opposed to morally "twisted", sinister

I think these connotations of words for left and right came about because right-handed people were considered the norm, and left-handed people were regarded as weird and different and therefore suspect. Interesting that the same thing seems to have happened in multiple languages.

@@mdaldridge I did NOT know that!

​@@languagejones6784 Trump is a weird word. It is indeed a childish euphemism for farting, but it also means to defeat or be superior, like the trump suit in certain card games, and also the game Top Trumps.

So one of the candidates in the upcoming US presidential elections is Donald Fart!

@@languagejones6784 It is true and kind of childish word. My kids were thrilled when we visited NYC and drove past Trump Tower. We had to explain to the taxi driver why they were laughing so much. He thought it was pretty funny too.

@@languagejones6784 Probably from “trumpet”. I’ve heard people refer to a fart or farting as “(playing the) bum trumpet”.

Kinda works, tho...

You've helped me crack open puzzlement around an incident I experienced several decades ago: a family friend's daughter is named "Zona", and her name came up in mixed company. The silence was profound.

My goodness I haven't heard that one in about 40 years… And then it was oranges…

@@rudetuesday poor girl that's terrible…

"Apple devourer" => possibly a reference to Eve? (Though Adam wasn't exactly innocent of that...)

That's actually kinda funny...

I just watched the consonant video and went hunting for vowels 😢

@@zhazhagab0r Fr, I WANNA LEARN THE IPA!!

But a group of 6 musicians is still a sextet!

On old (up to the 1980s) Italian school reports, subjects were graded out of ten, and the numbers were written out in letters rather than digits. The word for 6 is 'sei' (a so-so result), which can however be easily altered by the pupil into 'sette' (7 - a much better grade), so someone came up with the idea of using the Latin 'sex' instead. More difficult to alter, but a rare case of 'reverse censorship'.

It's funny I did not realize "Jeepers Creepers" was one of these.

Wrong, it is in fact "honey eater". "Honey knower" is a folk etymology.

I want to read Winnie the Pooh in Russian now!!

I think it’s fair to say y’all almost have the monopoly on “shite” as well

@@patrickhodson8715 sounds about right 😂

Oh yeah! My dad does this a ton, didnt realise it wasnt common

I don't think anyone thinks "feck" or "shite" are any better than the originals. It's just a particularly Irish way to say them...

@@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh yeah feck sounds a lot more friendly 😅

Relating to this, but conversely, the Japanese word for gray literally translates to “rat-colored”

Glad to hear it!

Do you mean 二屄?

Is he Jewish? There is a word I can think of there...

High as a kite?

It's one consonant away from an antisemitic slur

That show was the best. My favorite character was Deflator Mouse, who later became Batmanuel in the live action series. Favorite scene was when the little fish kid says that deflator mouse told his mom he'd bring him back by dinner. Deflator mouse says "I told your mom a lot of things" 😅

@JerseyMiller Yeah, I was unhappy with his name change in the live action. "Die Fledermaus" was perfect. It's German for "the bat" and also the name of an opera.

What kind of nonsense is this? Language is culture which is information storage which is used to guide how we think and act. Words designed to harm people are, obviously, bad words as they encode beliefs and behaviors that are, inarguably, BAD.

There is always intention behind what you say. You're not a caveman who's just making mouth noises if someone always reffered to you as r slur instead of your name or pronounce that is not just them making mouth noises. Words, sentences, communication everything has context .

Strange that you describe language as a bunch of value-neutral "mouth noises" while: A.) Using language to convey meaning (hm, it appears not just swwwr words so this. Perhaps it's a fundamental feature of language.) B.) Not making any 'moutth noises' at all (unless you speak aloud as you type) Just to be clear - there is nothing 'objective,' or even internally consistent about your take on language here.

I agree for the most part. Bad words are those that we as a group decide we shouldn't use. That's why in different cultures, different words are looked down on, because that is the choice of that group.

"Bull twinkies" in lieu of BS was a favorite of a childhood acquaintance. Which reminds me of a humorous view of advanced education at the local, huge university. "You know why they call those degrees B.S., M.S., and PhD? The first one is Bull***t, the second is More S**t, and the last one is Piled Higher and Deeper."

English definitely has that "your mother" thing too! It's not uncommon for someone to just say "your mom" as an (usually joking) insult