Strong Language

Single-frame, black and white cartoon showing an angry crowd at the Ryder Cup, which a sign calls "Derider Cup". They're waving U.S. flags and shouting profanities, shown as "F**k you!...", "@★!*", "@★💀! fatso", and "☠".

Sweary cartoon by Graeme Keyes, with nice use of grawlixes/obscenicons

I somehow missed “groksucker” until just now.

Word of the week: Chum A visit to Toronto inspires a slang investigation. Plus: Toronto street photos!

Word of the week: Chum. Bonus: photos from my recent trip to Toronto. | ht @misterslang.bsky.social @sesquiotic.bsky.social fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-th...

Free pro tip: when using Google Translate from English to French, if you want to switch from informal-you to formal-you, end the sentence with "sir." To achieve the opposite, end it with "you bastard."

E.g., "You had one job, you bastard." (I'm rehearsing my lines en route to meet my landlord. 🫠)

Not to my knowledge, unfortunately

Really Montana?

Heat map of the USA for the word "fuck". It's deep red all along the east and west coasts and the southern border states. Deep blue inland, and mixed (yellow, light blue) along the border with Canada.

FTA: Sweary maps 2: Swear harder. @stancarey.bsky.social presents @jwgrieve.bsky.social's heat maps of swearword use in the USA
stronglang.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/s... #maps

When fucks get real What the fuck has become so commonplace that, as our own Nancy Friedman pointed out, marketers are no longer shy about alluding to it. But its ubiquity has meant a loss of its former power, and we’…

FTA: What in the sweet suffering blue holy ever-loving literal shitting fuck? @ivacheung.com looks at how we intensify a popular phrase: stronglang.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/w...

Yeah, fuck the haters

Opinion | Why Does Everybody Swear All The Time Now?

Today in the NY Times, some old guy says that we all curse a lot now, and maybe that's why America is so bad:

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/o...

Unparliamentary Language: Irish Edition (Sweet Focal) It’s that most wonderful time of the year with the usual outpourings of peace and goodwill to all (wo)men – no more so than those noble elected representatives of the Irish houses of pa…

FTA: @voxhib.bsky.social on the absolutely not feckless Irish politicians stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/u...

The character's name was written in English as "Puck-Man", but when Namco localized the game for the United States they changed it to "P

nonnoncursing

Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle When you’ve already started saying fuck—whether it’s in “I don’t give a fuck” or just a good ol’ naked “Fuck!”—but realize you’re within earshot of delicate sensibilities, fiddle (or fiddlesticks!)…

FTA: @ivacheung.com on fiddling and diddling stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/h...

FTA: @mashedradish.bsky.social , fucking A! stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/w...

The Académie Française pushing to replace watersport with "control of the piss" was not on my bingo card for today.

Navy blue children's T-shirt from the retailer Mango. It bears the motto EVERY PLAYER COUNTS, with a tennis ball replacing the "O" in COUNTS

Every player what now?

shop.mango.com/si/en/p/boys...

cc @stronglang.bsky.social

#FuckCancer In The Emperor of All Maladies, his best-selling 2010 “biography of cancer,” Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the story of Fanny Rosenow, a breast cancer survivor who in the early 1950s wanted to place a…

FTA: fuck sickness, by @fritinancy.bsky.social stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/f...

WONDER SNATCH LIFTING SETTING POWDER A loose setting powder delivering up to 16 hours of sweat-proof, airbrushed perfection SNATCH it all in a WONDER! Set, lift, and brighten with this one-hit WONDER! In 4 translucent shades ... Read more [powder reads NYX PROFESSIONAL MAKEUP WONDER SNATCH]

oh. don't call it that

Sluts Last week, in response to the passage of draconian anti-abortion laws in several U.S. states, a Los Angeles–based makeup company announced that for four days it would be donating 100 percent of its…

I wrote about Lipslut and other sluts for @stronglang.bsky.social in 2019: stronglang.wordpress.com/2019/05/28/s...

Having a ball (or two) with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office I’m very excited to be a new contributor to Strong Language, after my two previous salacious guest posts on scandalous trademarks. I’ve been the author of Gilson on Trademarks, a treati…

FTA: Anne Gilson LaLonde's first appearance on Strong Language talking about trademarks stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/h...

A bunch of bullfuck Writing a book like Bullshit: A Lexicon—a look at words, common and obscure, for bullshit and bullshitters—was fun as fuck, as you might imagine. But one thing that’s not so much fun is coming acro…

FTA: @markpetersjokes.bsky.social asks “What’s this bullfuck?” stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/a...

Apologies to all syntacticians, but please take a look at my fresh article called "Fuck syntax and fucking syntax in the borrowing of swearwords for assessments in #Danish" - about the interactional functions of "fuck" and "fucking" in various assessments! #EMCA

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Motherfucking wind farms…

Still from the 1941 film "Love on the Dole", with the unfortunate subtitle "She's a strange lassie's arsehole".

Catastrophic subtitling on the 1941 movie "Love on the Dole".

(It should read "She's a strange lass, is our Sal"...)

“Smut” “Some people have a way with words,” the comedian Steve Martin used to say, “and other people . . . uh, not have way.” Tom Lehrer very much have way. The American musician, mathematician, and songw…

I wrote about Tom Lehrer on his 97th birthday for @stronglang.bsky.social. stronglang.wordpress.com/2025/04/09/s...

Here’s an article about swearing in the Slow Horses books. Relevant part, from Last Dead Letter (2020) as Jackson Lamb meets someone in a church for spy purposes:

Enshittification If you’ve been seeing or hearing enshittify or enshittification in the last week or so, you have one man to thank: Cory Doctorow, the journalist, sci-fi writer, and co-author of the new book Chokep…

My February 2023 "enshittification" post for @stronglang.bsky.social: stronglang.wordpress.com/2023/02/01/e...