I've always been a fan of "Great Caesar's Ghost!"
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
70 points (87.2% liked)
Ask Lemmy
30935 readers
1561 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
SomethingInGERMAN!!!
Okay, little backstory here. When I was growing up, there was this fighting game called Karnov's Revenge, and it was the 90s, so the characters said little 2 second phrases that more or less sounded like words. My friends and I were fascinated by it, ended up adding many of those phrases to our vocabulary. One of those characters was a giant German wrestler named Marstorius - and some of his phrases were just incomprehensible. So we ended up just yelling "SomethingInGERMAN" when he would pull of his big wresting move. No, not a translation, no actual German words were injured. And boyo did that stick, still say it to this day.
Well, boy howdy!
Shazbot
Jesus titty fucking Christ can be any name you want.
"Oh, beans" is a good one for replacing the "I screwed up" meaning of"damn it".
I'm sorry but although your objective is to rewire your neurons, in order to be understood by others with precision you would have to first change culture - and that takes a long, long time.
So in English you probably don't have good substitutes that don't sound religious outside of those you already mentioned and their varieties. I'd be asking a similar question to people who speak other languages, that can be fun to explore and see what other cultures use instead of "fucking hell" or "holy shit" if they have translatable expressions that don't include anything religious.
I'm not really too worried about being understood, just working on it for myself. And honestly, I think anything could be said in a certain way and be understood as a curse/outburst. Borrowing from different languages is a good idea, though!
That's so fetch!
I know a pastor that will say “mother father!” in lieu of motherfucker
To be clear, it’s a tongue in cheek nod to motherfucker as well.
Alan Davies from QI taught me that instead of "shut the fuck up!" one can say "shut the front door!"
Shut The Front Door!
Meanwhile French Quebec curse words are entirely made of religious words.
Hosti de sacrifice de câlice de tabarnak!!!
Lol, Catalan is very similar in that.
Ma cago en el cor sagrat de Deu!
Common swear words fall into religious, sexual, and fecal. If you merely want to evade religious, there's plenty to choose from. Shit, ass, fuck, etc.
load more comments
(1 replies)
cheese and rice!
I use "fucking terts" when I'm angry at a specific person ("terts" is a derogatory term for earth humans (from Alien Nation), and "furless human" when I'm in a slightly amused mood (it's what my cat used to curse me).
Jesus fuck is generally my 'surprised' swear.
I think you're going about this the wrong way. If you've ever heard a quebecer curse, you know that religious curses are the absolute best.
I had a franco sergeant in basic training; this charismatic 22nd-regiment killing machine who got seriously next-level expressive one day and all but peeled the paint off the walls. I knew a lot of French back then, and I only caught most of it as it was so fast, so angry; it was snarling and visceral and seething for 0715.
What I did catch was religious. All of it. I'm surprised I'm alive today. I'm surprised I wasn't brutally murdered on the spot. I'm glad I wore the brown pants.
I think you're severely limiting yourself by leaving that nuke in the silo; that's all I'm saying.
When I swear, I tend to use "fuck" or "bitch", and maybe "shit"
I've started saying "death" as a curse word
Only in german
Just use Russian swears
I don't think being 'non-religious' mean we should give up on words used religious people.
Believers in one god or another don't own those words. Non of them. They belong to all of us. They're words that belong to our common vocabulary and language. Nobody should be allowed to claim any ownership and exclusive usage.
If we start creating different vocabularies depending one's own system of beliefs, if we start limiting the use of certain words to certain groups of people (religious or, say, related to this or that specific color), where will that end? And then what common ground will we have remaining? What common language? How will we be able to keep on discussing together if we don't share the same language?
To use a Biblical reference, do we really want to create a new Tower of Babel and... are we that pretentious we think can act like if we were a god ourselves? God damn, I certainly don't. Heck, no. Fuck that.
That's just my 2 cents, obviously.
Do whatever you want. I'm not saying this is how everybody should speak - it's my decision for myself. Not sure why you're treating it like an attack on society.
My English is probably lacking (for that, I apologize), but I don't think I treated like 'anything' special. I only shared my point of view on what you expressed which is, you know, the exact purpose of any discussion. Hopefully.
Not sure why you’re treating it like an attack on society.
I consider giving up on any word an attack on society, that's true, for the reason I mentioned: language should be a common good, it should not be divided between groups or communities owing each a part of it. That's all I wanted to say. By no mean I consider what you or what anyone else could say an attack on anything or on anyone.
Or are we already at that point of entrenchment where anyone disagreeing with an idea is considered an 'attack' against that idea?