Getting Around the Censors: Making Up Your Own Swear Words
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Let’s face it, unless you’re a saint, the occasional swear word (also known as curse words in certain parts of the world) will slip out every now and then. Whether you’re stuck behind the world’s worst driver or you’ve dropped something on your foot, sometimes it just happens.
But having characters in fiction drop the “s”, “f” and “c” words – amongst an array of offensive others – can have some readers, publishers and moral guardians shaking their heads in disapproval. To get around this, certain writers have simply made up their own swear words.
The best of them seem to be in science fiction and fantasy writing, in worlds completely removed from our own, and many of them are clearly a variation of the “f” word we are all familiar with:
*Battlestar Galactica – in both versions of the classic sci-fi television show, “frak” is the swear word of choice and what makes it so believable is its similarity to the word it emulates.
*Farscape – a combination of the “f” word and hell, “frell” first appeared in the ninth episode of Farscape and is used as both a verb and a noun.
*Babylon 5 – another thinly veiled “f” bomb, yet somehow “frag” lacks a little, probably because it lacks the harsh consonant that tends to really sell the profanity of a swear word.
*Scrubs – okay, this one’s not science fiction or fantasy and it’s also commonly used in the real world by people who need to swear but can’t bring themselves to get down and dirty. Still, I defy anyone to come up with a better use of a faux swear word than Dr Elliot Reed, played by Sarah Chalke, saying “frick” on the many, many, many times her life goes down the crapper.
*Mrs Brown’s Boys – another real world show but certainly not the only one to use the traditional Irish substitution of “feck”. There’s something almost adorable about hearing an Irish person use this word.
*Red Dwarf – “smeg” is one of several swear words in the Red Dwarf universe but it is the best of them, sold beautifully by the character Dave Lister played by Craig Charles.
*Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – “zark” is probably the most swear-word like swear word in the Hitchhiker’s books (unlike “Belgium”, described as the “rudest word in the universe” and completely banned in all parts of the galaxy except for one where they don’t know what it means).
*The Smurfs – “Smurf, smurf, smurfety, smurf!” says Patrick Winslow in the 2011 movie and Gutsy responds with, “There is no call for that sort of language, laddie!” “Smurf” replaces a variety of swear words and even not-so-offensive words in The Smurfs to save the delicate ears of children and just for general added smurfety.
Goodness, if I lived in a different universe, I’d need to wash my mouth out with soap after all of that! But we’re still not finished:
*Firefly (and Serenity) – while “gorram” (probably a variation on “God damn”) and “rutting” seem fairly standard, it’s the random Chinese insults where the Browncoat universe really comes into its own. Because this version of the future envisions the English-speaking world and China merging into overarching world dominance, everyone speaks both languages but Mandarin is mostly reserved for the creative expletives the characters pepper their dialogue with. Translations of the insults include “stupid inbred stack of meat”, “panda piss”, “frog-humping son of a bitch”, “filthy fornicators of livestock”, “motherless goat of all motherless goats”, “holy mother of God and all her wacky nephews”, “the explosive diarrhoea of an elephant” and “holy testicle Tuesday”.
If you’re feeling especially salty but thoroughly uncreative, you can always go with foreign swear words, although it tends to be an issue if and when your writing is being translated into that foreign language. Or if you’re feeling salty and don’t give a f**k what the readers, publishers, moral guardians and censors think, you can embark on a real world swear word writing spree and see if you like the results.
George Washington said that “swearing is a vice so mean and so low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it” but sometimes it’s exactly what fictional characters need to release the stress of the things writers put them through.
