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Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world

6d ago

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.

91 comments

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".

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

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!

Blood and bloody ashes

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

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.

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
- 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.

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.

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!

Fucking fuck
Fucking shit
Wtf
What the shit
Fuck me
I mean there are endless combinations
- Sometimes simple is best.

“Aw biscuits”

Bob Saget
- A classic

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.
- I thought the whole thing was that Christians weren't the ones who use God as a swear word
  
  One of their commandments is to not "take the Lord's name in vain". Modern Christians have interpreted this to mean not using the word 'god' as an interjection or swear. What was actually meant by it was to not use god as a justification for things that do not comport with god's religious teachings. You know, like claiming god says you should hate trans people, or that god has chosen you personally to be in charge of everyone. You know, the exact thing Christians do all the fucking time.

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!"

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

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.

Big fan of people angrily shouting TITS
Also, cum's on the table

"By the power of grey skull!" (Fucking hell)

"Kiss me where the wind blows"

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.
https://www.arcadequartermaster.com/kr_characters.html

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.
  https://screenrant.com/firefly-swear-word-guide-gorram/

I've always been a fan of "Great Caesar's Ghost!"

"fuck me in the ass, that's mildly inconvenient"
- i mean, if you say so.

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 whee
- Rackin' frackin' varmint!

Technically, it's basically equivalent to "oh my god", but the Vietnamese phrase Oi Troi Oi is outstanding

Shazbot

"oh my fauci"
"thank darwin"

Always some material from Bill Dance. First clip on this one
https://youtu.be/hoQIljOKwpo?

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 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.

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.
- That's so fetch!
- 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!

Jesus titty fucking Christ can be any name you want.
- salt titty fucking esc
  doesn't quite roll off the tongue tho
  
  Jaba the titty fucking kek. Rolls well

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".

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).

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!

Shut The Front Door!

cheese and rice!

I think you're going about this the wrong way. If you've ever heard a quebecer curse, you know that religious curses are the absolute best.
I had a franco sergeant in basic training; this charismatic 22nd-regiment killing machine who got seriously next-level expressive one day and all but peeled the paint off the walls. I knew a lot of French back then, and I only caught most of it as it was so fast, so angry; it was snarling and visceral and seething for 0715.
What I did catch was religious. All of it. I'm surprised I'm alive today. I'm surprised I wasn't brutally murdered on the spot. I'm glad I wore the brown pants.
I think you're severely limiting yourself by leaving that nuke in the silo; that's all I'm saying.

When I swear, I tend to use "fuck" or "bitch", and maybe "shit"

Jesus fuck is generally my 'surprised' swear.

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 USA
- Alternating 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
  
  oh, that was just a suggestion with a topic that i find hilarious
  and sorry, i did not want to insult you
  (additionally, i am not from Quebec and i probably insult them more with that i dont know where that country is)

Just use Russian swears

Only in german

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?

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