What the F Quotes

“Looking just at English, you’ll find that nearly all the most profane words in Great Britain, New Zealand, and the United States fall into one of these four categories: praying, fornicating, excreting, and slurring. This is an important point, important enough to name a principle for it. I hereby propose we call it the Holy, Fucking, Shit, Nigger Principle.”
― Benjamin K. Bergen, What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves

“Very occasionally, you’ll come across gestures transcribed in words, like *shrug* or *sigh*, but these are vanishingly rare. A”
― Benjamin K. Bergen, What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves

“There are also older English curse words that have fallen out of favor, like zounds, which derives from God’s wounds, and gadzooks, from God’s eyes.”
― Benjamin K. Bergen, What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves