bad language

I object to Granny23's rude soup

If we put a * or two in is it still a rude word?

If anyone reading it is able to fill in the blanks, the rude word is in their mind, not the poster's.

We innocent ones know that F**k stands for flak, doesn't it? As in "Get the flak out of here" - ie, "Go away and take the explosives with you" or "He f****d up the job good and proper" ie, "He demolished it, just like shooting it down"

I find the use of four letter words as a sort of punctuation very depressing, especially when some people seem to have a very limited vocabulary of longer words. (Yes I do use them myself, usually when I'm alone and swearing at myself.) But I did love Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It, the way his swearing took flight and became a new art form. It was a use of language way beyond the average hoodie on a street corner.

Just for interest's sake, do those who feel comfortable with swearing also feel comfortable with their/other people's children using swear words?

My grandsons have been known to come out with the odd one or two. Learned off their granny no doubt. So long as it's not within hearing of their mum or dad we're ok.

Don't get the idea that I go around swearing all the time. Normally I don't. Just when stressed. I don't consider it a big deal.

I enjoy swearing on here. It can add something to a post.

On one forum I go on, it isn`t possible to write the football team Arsenal, comes up as a load of asterisks! On another, if a rude word is used to describe someone, it`s changed to "jolly silly person".

Hey Jingle and Bags, I seem to recalll we have had this discussion before - it p****d me off so much last time that I went back to my other boards who didn't get the vapours about a bit of bad language.
I see lots of things on here I don't like, even the odd opinion I find offensive on a personal level, the secret is to walk on by if you don't like it.

In answer to ga's question: yes, the way my child does it.

That's the short answer. Actually, I don't swear much. I am rather too proud of my level of education to feel the need or to bother [ooh! get her emoticon!], but DD1 has taken to chucking in the occasional f word recently because it's "the thing to do" when you're at high school. Remember that? I do. Not that we used the f word in those days.

Anyway, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. If anything, it makes me smile at the phase she's in.

It does bother me if she is rude, or even merely not quite as polite as I'd like her to be. But that's different from just playing with 'bad' words to see what the effect is. And it's different from expressing irritation with some nicely forceful words that grown ups get in a tizzy about.

Isn't being a teenager all about finding out what puts grown ups in a tizzy?

Diva, yes. Chuckling at your "vapours" remark. That's just what it is.

I like 'jolly silly person'.

I might try saying that when arguing with DH instead of my usual offensive language.

Swearing can be so freeing.

Flak being educated all the time.

When absentdaughter was little I made an effort never to swear so that when she picked up inappropriate words at school or wherever – as she inevitably would – I could truthfully say "We don't use that word in our house". Jolly became my default qualifier. Consequently, all my lovely German au pairs went home using expressions like jolly silly and jolly good.

I don't swear often, but when I do it's because I'm angry. I don't use the 'f' word, nor the 'b' word which starts with a 'bu.......', but am known to shout 'bo....cks' , as in 'bo.....cks to that, or that's a load of old 'bo.....cks'. I don't know why - habit maybe. Perhaps it's because I find the word has a good hearty kick to it.

......and no, I'm not advocating violence to the male anatomy.

Children swear anyway, however good an example parents set them.
DS was educated at the English Schools Foundation School in Kowloon until he was 7.
One day he came home muttering 'doy lay mo, doy lay mo!'
We discovered that this apparently common Chinese expletive means 'F**k your grandmother'

Sorry Bags and Jo7 are you related in some way or are you one and the same person? .You are always backing each other up with any thread that you are taking part in. Using the F-word on this thread is entirely unnecessary Bags even out of extreme annoyance. My father used to say that people who resorted to foul language are unable to express their anger in an educated and intelligent manner.

I don't think swearing is used to express anger nowadays I think most swearing seems to be to avoid thinking of a vivid adjective to fill the blank. Outside the Theatre Royal in Newcastle I saw a young man with his little boy sitting on his shoulders ,deep in intent conversation. How charming I thought fathers get such a bad press these days. As I passed the little boy wanted to carry his father. Fathers reply was if you f******think you can f**** carry me you f**** can't . Really depressed me.

Little boy was about two or three

I don't think using swear words indicates a lack of intelligence, breeding, education or morals. A well chosen swear word can be just as appropriate to the situation as other emotive or strong words. I don't choose to use swear words in front of children, although over the years they have overheard me, but they have also overheard me behaving responsibly and not slagging people off or disclosing information that should not be imposed on children. We can get on our high horses about swearing, but ignore other behaviour that would be better addressed.

Three of my four children swear every now and then. The other one is so placid that she rarely feels the need to use strong words. None of us use swear words as a way to be aggressive, but generally for humour or emphasis, and not that frequently.

I watched an episode of Celebrity Big Brother with my daughter the other day, and we roared laughing at Rylan Clark, who does swear a lot, but called Razor Ruddock 'you cheeky f***er' in such an affectionate way, no-one could possibly be offended by it. A very funny moment

"Sorry Bags and Jo7 are you related in some way or are you one and the same person?"

OMG! Not another one of those! #getoriginal

Can some kind person like Kali explain to this simpleton the use and meaning of the hash tag. Is it an expletive?

No! It's not an expletive!!! It's just a thing from Twitter (but on there it actually does something) God knows what

I think on Twitter it is used like a thread, and if you search for that hashtag you'll come up with that conversation. There are some famous ones like
#blamethemuslims, started by a young Muslim girl objecting to the way every time there's an atrocity (I think in this case the Norway shootings) the knee-jerk reaction is to blame the Muslims.
I think on here it's just being used to summarise the essence of a post, or the poster's feelings.
#dokeepupattheback

Running into problems with online word games. The dictionaries all seem to be American (cuts out a lot of standard British words they don't use) and puritanical (won't allow mild expletives). District nurse!