swearing

When I was very young, almost six, one of my older cousins left a copy of Huckelberry Finn at my house. I started to read it and was puzzled when Huck told Tom about his life with the Widow Douglas.

To paraphrase, he said that he had to cuss for ten minutes just to get the taste back. My grand mother had always told me that if we kids said bad words or talked back that our tongues would turn black and shrivel up and fall right out of our heads.

Well, I wanted to know what it tasted like to cuss anyhow, so one morning after every one else had gotten up, I went upstairs and said every bad word I could think of. Needless to say, I didn't get any taste from it, just a bad case of the guilt and fear that I would wake up one morning and my tongue would be lying on my pillow beside me.

Marie

Up until about the age of 8 I was convinced that the f-word actually was the word Faroono ... yes I now know that, that isn't the word nor is a word at all. But for some unexplained reason I thought this when I was younger ... and of course I never thought to clarify it with my parents because I didn't want to get in trouble for saying the f-word to them...

Anon

A girl in our primary school class had been kept back a year because of learning difficulties, so - presumably to prevent her from feeling worse about it - the teacher forbid anyone from saying "stupid". Being one of the smarter ones, it was obvious to me that calling someone "stupid" wasn't very nice, but 2 years later when I told someone "I don't like football, it's stupid!" the whole playground fell out with me. In our small school words like "bum" and "poo" were okay, but "stupid" was just far too far. If someone said it you would run to the teacher and whisper "James said the "s" word!" in her ear.

They must have thought that we were terribly brought up.

Louise "Stupid" MacD

I used to believe that if you spelled the swear words, it wasn't the same as saying them. I assumed it "didn't count". But just to make sure, I hid under my bed when I said them.

Anon

As the youngest, at 5,of about a dozen cousins visiting us on our farm in 1951, I was the one who, wanting to be like the older kids, said "damn it!" in front of the grownups. My Mom washed my mouth with the suds from a bar of green Palmolive soap. I always think of it when I see 'A Christmas Story'.

Karlene

My father convinced me that grawlixes (those "@#$%&*" symbols that sometimes appear in comics to represent swears) were pronounced "errr-rrr-rr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rr." Even though I'm an adult, I still can't stop pronouncing grawlixes like that.

@#$%&*!!!

When i was a little girl my mum heard me say a really bad word. She told me that it was ok to say this word even though it wasn't very nice but under no circumstances could i say the word redsocks. So from then on whenever i wanted to swear i said redsocks it wasn't until i was about 18 that my friend asked me why i kept on saying redsocks? i was soooo mad at my mum for making me look stupid

*$!@?

When i was about 8 My mum heard me swearing. She told me it was bad and that if I done it it would turn my mouth black then later on that day I had been eating liquorice which of course turned my mouth black and I had thought it was because I swore! I never swore for quite some time after that!

Dolly

when i was in 5 grade my aunt said think of names that rhyme with '-ut' so my sister came up with sl*t and we that it was pretty funny and we didn't know what it was and we went home and said "hey, sl*ts!" when we got in the kitchen we got in trouble and were sent to our rooms we didn't know why i looked it up and told my sister they still wont let us live it down

Jaya

I used to think that the word "wanker" wasn't swearing, and once I went to watch the football (soccer), and when the referee made the wrong decision, me and the rest of the fans got up on the chair and shouted "The Referee's a wanker!" My grandma looked shocked because she thought I was a polite little lad.

Rich

I used to believe that if you spelled the curse word it didn't count. But only because my mom did it first. ^_-

Cassie

I used to believe that swearing was just saying, “I swear!”

Anon

When I was in like 5th grade or something I watched the movie "Juno." There's that one part where she says "Mom! You's a dick!" I asked my mom, what that meant, and she said it meant "a mean person." For a while I thought all swear words were just meaningless insults that for some arbitrary reason were worse to say than something like "meanie."

Anon

I used to think that b*tch was the worst cuss word in the world until the seasoned older sister of my best friend broadened our horizons over a picnic lunch.

Mary

I thought Gaston from Beauty and the Beast was a bad guy because his name had "gas" in it and that was a 'bad word.'

Belle

i believed the f-word was fart until i was about 8.

Kendra

I used to think that "damn" was a really bad swear word, but it was in one of my favorite songs at the time, "The Search is Over" by Survivor. I was shocked but rather excited by the badness of this, and I used to play it really loud and sing along in front of my mother, just to see what kind of reaction it would get out of her. She didn't notice at all. I wasn't sure if I felt triumphantly naughty or just disappointed.

Anon

When I was a child, I overheard my second eldest brother and his friends saying that when they were children, they knew all of the swear words except the long one beginning with "m." For some reason, I thought the elusive "m" word must have been "Makker." I never dared use this word and was shocked when I heard that it can short for "Malcolm." I then decided I must be wrong and was puzzled until discovering the word was in fact "mother******."

Anon

when i was little, i used to think that when u swore, you would die. everytime i heard my mom swear from then on, i would hurriedly ask her if she needed CPR.

i found out the truth when i was about 10.. or 11.

Jessyca

When my daugher was young (before she knew profanity), she was really angry at me because it was bed time, and she just didn't want to go to sleep. She balled her fists up next to her face, started shaking, and yelled "You are FOOD"!
In baby language, I believe I got cussed out!

Anon