Anyone got some good replacement swears to replace the typical religious variety?
Anyone got some good replacement swears to replace the typical religious variety?
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.
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
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”
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
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.
German has a rich vocabulary of non-religious swears:
https://dein-sprachcoach.de/schimpfwoerter-jetzt-wird-es-schmutzig/
Excellent
Geiler Scheiß!
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.
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 can do this all day!
~Chosen specialist subject.~Shitting biscuits!
Foamy gushing twat!
Wank spanner!
Rancid gobstopper!
Juicy fat ballsack!
Piss on a stick!
Sloppy jizz mop!
Spunky pus bucket!
Steaming shit stain!
Thirsty cock gobbler!
Greasy prick spasm!
Fuck a duck!
Crusty cum sock!
William H. tap-dancing Macy on a motherfucking motorcycle!
Retching cunt nugget!
Flacid spunk sock!
Mouldy knob cheese!
Pint of shart!
Gaping arse sleeve!
Pus-filled pussy pocket!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
Avis: Vous avez été exilé de !quebec@lemmy.ca
Notice: You have been exiled from !quebec@lemmy.ca
Tabarnak !
If anyone wants an example of Québecois swearing, I recommend checking out Lorembarnak. It's lorem ipsum but tabarnak-ified.
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
Big fan of people angrily shouting TITS
Also, cum's on the table
Blathering Blatherskites!
Great Scott! Great Googly Moogly Narf! Blech Hot Dog! Hot diggity! Salad! Biscuits! Corn Nuggets! Nerfherder Awoooguhhhh! Ballyhoo Farfegnugen To the mattresses! What in tarnation? Shoo wheeRackin' frackin' varmint!
Rather than "god damn" I usually say "gods damn". I'm not religious at all, but I'd rather someone mistake me for a polytheistic pagan than a Christian.
"By the power of grey skull!" (Fucking hell)
"Kiss me where the wind blows"
Bob Saget
A classic
I've always been a fan of "Great Caesar's Ghost!"
I'm sorry but although your objective is to rewire your neurons, in order to be understood by others with precision you would have to first change culture - and that takes a long, long time.
So in English you probably don't have good substitutes that don't sound religious outside of those you already mentioned and their varieties. I'd be asking a similar question to people who speak other languages, that can be fun to explore and see what other cultures use instead of "fucking hell" or "holy shit" if they have translatable expressions that don't include anything religious.
I'm not really too worried about being understood, just working on it for myself. And honestly, I think anything could be said in a certain way and be understood as a curse/outburst. Borrowing from different languages is a good idea, though!
Alan Davies from QI taught me that instead of "shut the fuck up!" one can say "shut the front door!"
Well, boy howdy!
"Oh, beans" is a good one for replacing the "I screwed up" meaning of"damn it".
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.
Shazbot
I know a pastor that will say “mother father!” in lieu of motherfucker
To be clear, it’s a tongue in cheek nod to motherfucker as well.
cheese and rice!
Technically, it's basically equivalent to "oh my god", but the Vietnamese phrase Oi Troi Oi is outstanding
I use "fucking terts" when I'm angry at a specific person ("terts" is a derogatory term for earth humans (from Alien Nation), and "furless human" when I'm in a slightly amused mood (it's what my cat used to curse me).
Common swear words fall into religious, sexual, and fecal. If you merely want to evade religious, there's plenty to choose from. Shit, ass, fuck, etc.
Just listen and pick your favorite.
I feel you OP. I do feel silly saying "oh my god" as a reflex utterance considering I'm a lifelong Atheist lmao.
There's gotta be something better than sarcastic takes like South Park saying "oh my science!"
When I swear, I tend to use "fuck" or "bitch", and maybe "shit"
Meanwhile French Quebec curse words are entirely made of religious words.
Hosti de sacrifice de câlice de tabarnak!!!
Lol, Catalan is very similar in that.
Ma cago en el cor sagrat de Deu!
Jesus fuck is generally my 'surprised' swear.
Just use Russian swears
Blood and bloody ashes
I've started saying "death" as a curse word
SoUnDs LiKe SoMeOnE nEeDs SoMe FrEeDoM fRiEs
Edit: its highly specialised against people like MAGA, the term originates from americans being angry at the french because they critisized a war made by the USAAlternating case text is more offensive than any profanity
I've apparently offended the entire territory of Quebec with my question, so maybe that's appropriate XD
I don't think being 'non-religious' mean we should give up on words used religious people.
Believers in one god or another don't own those words. Non of them. They belong to all of us. They're words that belong to our common vocabulary and language. Nobody should be allowed to claim any ownership and exclusive usage.
If we start creating different vocabularies depending one's own system of beliefs, if we start limiting the use of certain words to certain groups of people (religious or, say, related to this or that specific color), where will that end? And then what common ground will we have remaining? What common language? How will we be able to keep on discussing together if we don't share the same language?
To use a Biblical reference, do we really want to create a new Tower of Babel and... are we that pretentious we think can act like if we were a god ourselves? God damn, I certainly don't. Heck, no. Fuck that.
That's just my 2 cents, obviously.
Do whatever you want. I'm not saying this is how everybody should speak - it's my decision for myself. Not sure why you're treating it like an attack on society.
My English is probably lacking (for that, I apologize), but I don't think I treated like 'anything' special. I only shared my point of view on what you expressed which is, you know, the exact purpose of any discussion. Hopefully.
Not sure why you’re treating it like an attack on society.
I consider giving up on any word an attack on society, that's true, for the reason I mentioned: language should be a common good, it should not be divided between groups or communities owing each a part of it. That's all I wanted to say. By no mean I consider what you or what anyone else could say an attack on anything or on anyone.
Or are we already at that point of entrenchment where anyone disagreeing with an idea is considered an 'attack' against that idea?
Only in german
Always some material from Bill Dance. First clip on this one