April 6, 2026
Regular readers will be familiar with Strong Language, a group blog about swearing that I co-founded with James Harbeck in 2014. If you’re interested in swearing as a linguistic or cultural phenomenon, I recommend bookmarking or subscribing to it.
New posts by our excellent contributors are less frequent now, but that makes it easier to catch up if you haven’t visited before or feel like browsing the archives. The blog has over 400 posts: fascinating and colourful explorations of profanity for readers not averse to such material.
I also contribute to Strong Language now and then, and this post on Sentence first introduces the last few that I wrote. What follows below is not very sweary – there’s one reference to a strong swear – but if this type of language freaks you out like it does Ned Flanders, or just plain doesn’t interest you, you may prefer to bail out here.
From “Be-bop-a-Lisa” in Simpsons Comics no. 6 (1994). Script & pencils: Bill Morrison; Inks: Tim Bavington; Colours: Cindy Vance. Editor: Steve Vance
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etymology, language, linguistics, slang, usage, words | Tagged: blogging, etymology, language, linguistics, pop culture, pragmatics, profanity, slang, strong language, swearing, usage, words | 
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Posted by Stan Carey
June 16, 2025
A new book spine poem, on a linguistic (and mildly sweary) theme, with some notes on its contents below the photograph.
*
Swearing Is Good for You
The F-word – spell it out:
Swearing is good for you.
Um . . . holy shit. Says who?
The man who lost his language swearing
*gestures* because internet
(What the F);
The woman who talked to herself
in praise of profanity
(Just my type).
Shady characters,
Role models.
*
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8 Comments | books, humour, language, photography, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: A.L. Barker, Anne Curzan, Benjamin Bergen, book spine poem, book spine poetry, bookmash, books, David Crystal, Desmond Morris, Emma Byrne, found poetry, Geoffrey Hughes, Gretchen McCulloch, humour, Jesse Sheidlower, John Waters, Keith Houston, language, Melissa Mohr, Michael Adams, Michael Erard, photography, poetry, profanity, Sheila Hale, Simon Garfield, swearing, visual poetry, wordplay | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
December 13, 2022
At Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, I have a new post up about the idiom swear like a [X]. After seeing the phrase swear like a trooper (maybe in Beryl Bainbridge’s A Quiet Life), I got to wondering how it arose; a few hours later I had found more [X]s than I’d ever imagined existed.
5 Comments | language, linguistics, phrases, words | Tagged: blogging, corpus linguistics, cursing, film, films, idioms, language, linguistics, Mastodon, profanity, profanology, simile, strong language, swear like a sailor, swear like a trooper, swearing, taboo language, taboo words, words | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
September 4, 2016
One of the more entertaining literary spats of recent times was between two biographers of the poet John Betjeman (1906–84). It kicked off in earnest when A.N. Wilson, in a review at The Spectator in 2002, described Bevis Hillier’s biography of Betjeman as a ‘hopeless mishmash’:
Some reviewers would say that it was badly written, but the trouble is, it isn’t really written at all. It is hurled together, without any apparent distinction between what might or might not interest the reader. . . . Bevis Hillier was simply not up to the task which he set himself.
Hillier’s three-volume authorised work had taken him 25 years, and he was none too pleased to see it dismissed so. Years later he described Wilson as ‘despicable’. But harsh words were not enough: Hillier wanted retribution, and he got his chance when Wilson undertook to write his own biography of Betjeman.
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21 Comments | books, humour, literature, stories, wordplay, writers | Tagged: A.N. Wilson, acrostic, Bevis Hillier, biography, books, history, John Betjeman, letters, literary history, literary hoaxes, literature, love letters, reading, stories, swear words, swearing, wordplay, writers | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
July 26, 2016
It’s over a year since I blogged about Strong Language. Time to recap.
For the uninitiated, Strong Language is a group blog about swearing – the linguistics and culture of taboo language – set up by James Harbeck and me in 2014. It boasts a great team of writers comprising linguists, lexicographers, historians, editors, and other word adepts.
There are swears in this post, so bail out now if they bother you.
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3 Comments | language, linguistics, slang, speech, words, writing | Tagged: curse words, cursing, language, linguistics, profanity, profanology, slang, speech, strong language, swear words, swearing, taboo language, taboo words, words, writing | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
May 23, 2016
Some familiar words have etymologies right in front of us yet apt to stay hidden. Breakfast breaks a fast, the vowels disguising it well. Remorse is ‘biting back’, your conscience gnawing at you. Semicolon is a folk etymology of samey colon, on account of its resemblance to the other mark.
OK, I made that one up.
I read a nice account of another such etymology in Geoffrey Hughes’s Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanities in English (1991). The book packs considerable detail, scholarly insight and amusing lists into its 280 pages, so I’ll follow its lead and keep this post short.1
In a section on ‘numinous words: charms, spells and runes’, Hughes writes:
One of the most dramatic instances of the use of a malign spell in Anglo-Saxon literature is wrought by the monster Grendel [in Beowulf].2 Described as one of the evil tribe of Cain and an enemy of the Lord, he puts a spell on the weapons of his victims, the Scyldings. The key verb in the text at this point is, fascinatingly, forsworen, literally ‘forsworn’, indicating that the verb forswerian could mean ‘to hinder by swearing; to render powerless by incantation; to make useless by magic’.
Hughes goes on to relate other examples of such word-magic from the Life of St Wilfrid and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Then he quotes from The Battle of Maldon and picks up the -swear- thread again:
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Posted by Stan Carey
June 24, 2015
When the horror comedy film Slither came out in 2006, I thought it far too derivative, with major plot points and big reveals rehashed from ideas I’d seen before – in David Cronenberg’s Shivers and Rabid, Brian Yuzna’s Society, and the entire first half of George Romero’s career.
But there were things I liked about it too, so I felt I owed it another look. Second time around I appreciated its queasy charms and lively sense of fun much more, and as an unexpected bonus it contains a brief semantic dispute.
This takes place in a car as our heroes escape from unspeakable weirdness and try to figure out what’s going on. Slight spoilers follow in the subtitled images below. Some dialogue is repeated here to accommodate editing cuts and show who’s speaking. If strong language bothers you, flee now while you can.
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Posted by Stan Carey
Sentence first 