Hot answers tagged offensive-language
55
I found the term "grawlixes" here: The Lexicon of Comicana.
Grawlixes
Typographical symbols standing for profanities, appearing in dialogue balloons in place of actual dialogue.
I also came across the terms "profanitype" and "symbol swearing." I think I like "grawlixes" best.
44
Using Jew instead of Jewish as an adjective is usually done by people more interested in classifying than describing, which is why it is particularly pejorative.
The use of a noun to identify someone is often seen as pejorative anyway, because it doesn't capture the full complexity of a human being's behavior and traits. For instance:
He's a cocaine ...
41
This is a difficult question, because English is in the middle of a shift of social mores with regards to obscenities and vulgarities.
The "traditional" swear words (fuck, shit, ass, damn, etc.) have had their offensiveness gradually worn down over the past century, to the point where in many communities they're generic modifiers. Large parts of the ...
40
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=boob
Noun
S: (n) dumbbell, dummy, dope, boob, booby, pinhead (an ignorant or foolish person)
S: (n) breast, bosom, knocker, boob, tit, titty (either of two soft fleshy milk-secreting glandular organs on the chest of a woman)
Verb
S: (v) drop the ball, sin, blunder, boob, goof (commit a faux ...
39
As others have said, both refer to a woman's breasts, but the main difference is actually in the connotation. While both are euphemisms, boobs is a slightly more socially acceptable term. Women, in my presence at least, use the term boobs; tits is more a term that men use and generally in a more lurid fashion.
36
The primary theory appears to be that it derived from the "Greek monogram for Jesus, IHS or IHC" (World Wide Words) which is standard for the Greek name of IHCOYC (Christian Origins) which comes from ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (Persus Digital Library; see also the comments below). The origin stems from incorrectly assuming that IHC was an initialization of Jesus' name; the I ...
35
They all can mean women who sleep with men for money. Prostitute is the most technical term. Hooker seems most commonly used in the United States, while in Britain this term is reserved for a position in rugby. Whore sounds much more violent to me. If one were seeking a woman to pay to sleep with him, he probably wouldn't say "I'm looking for a whore ...
35
“Patting each other on the back” would fit the bill. For example:
If you’re finished with this circle jerk, maybe we could move on to new business.
Could be replaced with:
If you’re finished patting each other on the back, maybe we could move on to new business.
31
These have also been called obscenicons. Several links on Language Log offer an in-depth look at their usage.
More on the early days of obscenicons
Obscenicons a century ago
CALL ME... UNPRONOUNCEABLE
The "word" represented by the symbols could be pronounced bleep:
So people came up with a small set of conventional euphemistic readings for ...
30
Anything can be offensive, or not. Offense is in the mind of the subject, and may take intent of the speaker into account.
In my particular culture (Western Canadian Anglophone Caucasian, which overlaps with lots of other cultures, especially throughout North America), at this particular time (2010's, but extending back for quite a few years), I would ...
30
Consider extraneous, "Not belonging to, or dependent upon, a thing; without or beyond a thing; foreign", and synonyms like superfluous ("in excess of what is required or sufficient") or pleonastic ("Using an excessive number of words").
Other synonyms of superfluous include excessive, extra, supernumerary, surplus, unnecessary, extravagant, some of which ...
27
Rather than getting confused, let me post an answer:
In both British and American English, the word "ass" is used for "donkey".
For "buttocks", British English uses "arse", while American English uses "ass".
In British English, the two words are not interchangeable. "Arse" means only "buttocks", while "ass" means only "donkey".
In American English, there ...
26
They're both terms for female breasts. Women tend to refer to these as "boobs" and not "tits"; with men it can go either way, but a good part of the time they'll use "tits". Other (somewhat vulgar and borderline spring-break moronic) terms are knockers, twins, hooters, hoo-hahs, etc. Puritanical people sometimes call them bosoms, which is strange because ...
25
I would say that the word gay means ‘homosexual’ only, with two caveats:
A lot of people, especially young people, use gay as a generic adjective meaning ‘bad’ or ‘lame’. This is, of course, considered inappropriate and rude by polite society, but use of gay in this way is pervasive in situations where there are a lot of young people, such as video gaming ...
25
The usage stats from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) look as follows:
BNC COCA
TOTAL SPOKEN TOTAL SPOKEN
what the hell 716 143 4668 408
what on earth 585 85 607 99
what the fuck 93 ...
23
Claudiu pretty much covered it, but there's one thing more to discuss. "Whore" has an unsavory meaning, to be sure, but it's lately been used in a milder sense, to describe someone who will do just about anything to get something he or she wants. In this case it is coupled with another noun. Examples:
attention whore: Someone who will do anything to get ...
21
The term "chubby" would generally be only used to refer to babies or small children and even then some parents may take offense.
Some positive terms used to describe a pleasantly plump woman (in order of safety: safest to use first):
Curvaceous: (esp. of a woman or a woman's figure) Having an attractively curved shape.
Rubenesque: plump and sensuous ...
21
One synonym for "shit-eating" is smug:
looking or feeling too pleased about something you have done or achieved
So you can say that someone has a "smug grin" or a "smug look on their face". It still has the negative connotation of "shit-eating grin", but is suitable for polite company.
A related idiom is that one can look like the cat that got the ...
19
Anecdotally I can say that it's correct, since it's how my mother used to refer to mine when I was very small ;) I think in general it's used with small children because it's a "polite"/neutral word, and if the child uses it in company, or at school or whatever, they're not going to get into trouble because of it.
18
This is a touchy and complicated issue. There is no simple answer. I'm gay and I probably would be far more offended by the use of "retarded" than by the use of "gay" that you're describing. The problem is not if you are offending anyone but if you might offend someone, and where and when. I personally don't mind people using the word "gay" that way, in ...
18
The word
rectum
like the nearby anus, is somewhat more formal than the alternatives, which are pretty informal or vulgar.
It is the concept itself, traveling through the alimentary canal and exiting from the waste area that probably invoked the reaction of your friend.
The word itself, 'rectum' is fine (like 'penis', 'vagina', etc), it's the ...
17
"Canuck" is a slang word for someone from Canada. It's not usually considered offensive — sometimes it's even affectionate (and Canadians use it themselves in quite a few contexts). It's a regional nickname, like "Yankee" and other terms.
It is likely that "The Rock" simply took the (offensive) word "motherfuckers", and replaced "fuck" with the rhyming ...
17
The word Jew got that way in roughly the same way every other derogatory word got that way. Lots of people said really nasty things about the people the word describes for a long time, and eventually the bad things got associated with the word itself.
There are those that think somehow derogatory (or "loaded") words themselves are the problem, and insist on ...
17
To bring in the legal aspect I might say one of: "to ensure we are on solid legal ground", or "have solid legal standing", or "to ensure we have the law on our side".
Also, "to cover one's bases" is a politically correct version of your original "a***s".
17
I realize that Ngrams have limitations and can be overused, but I thought there might be a use for one with this question, and the result was not disappointing:
The Ngram indicates that what on earth has seen its heyday, but isn't extinct yet.
Thumbing through the results of the book search, one can see that many of its modern uses are puns (such as the ...
16
Idiomatically a four-letter word is a swearword, considered rude and unacceptable in certain contexts.
The implication is here is that thinking and coming up with original solutions to problems is not to be frowned upon in the same way, and indeed is acceptable and encouraged.
16
Am I right in saying that in the US the primary usage of the word is for a man to call a woman a cunt as an accusation of reprehensible moral standards, as well as it being laced with undertones of misogyny and sexism? In this context, extreme offensiveness is very much the intent.
In the UK it’s not really used that way; rather it’s just another generic ...
16
Among Catholics, there is the pejorative Cafeteria Catholic for those who selectively pick and choose which tenets of the faith they obey in their daily lives. Someone who attends Mass and says the catechisms on Sunday, yet still supports abortion rights and eats meat on Lent, is considered a hypocrite in the sense you offer by some other Catholics.
EDIT: ...
16
It's probably worth prefixing all this with the caveat that, as discovered from the discussion on your previous question, this does vary quite a bit between from place to place (and possibly between classes, professions, sexes etc...), so do beware that what answers you get may well not apply to the whole of the UK :)
I'm not sure which films you've been ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
