During my high school years, I had the fortune of attending a Christian school...so cursing loudly was kind of frowned upon. So my friends and I developed what we fondly referred to as "the fruits and veggies system".
eg, "Grapes and carrots it's cold out here!" and "Joe, stop being such a pomegranate."
There was once a chief petty-officer in the Navy who had a pretty good grasp of various forms of swearing and wasn't afraid to use them. On a day particularly fraught with outburst, a sailor performing a lifeboat drill accidentally let his line slip, allowing the lifeboat to tilt and spill its entire compliment into the ocean. The chief walked over to the rail and looked over at all the sailors floundering around in the ocean and searched his vast vocabulary for something to say. His knowledge failed him, leaving him with only two small words to express his opinion on the situation. "Oh, dear."
Thus, whenever a situation is almost past the point of swearing, a soft, almost hesitant 'oh, dear.' comes to mind.
'Dinkle-fits' works well when referring to a person, as does 'farmer'. Sometimes I simply say 'multi-talented' when speaking of someone who could fit more than one label.
He-he. Some nice replies so far.
My own contribution is original as far as I know.
I use the phrase 'Blue Gel' a fair amount when I can be restrained enough to avoid swearing.
I'm a teacher-librarian at an elementary school, so I have to be careful at work. And since I am the technology person for the school I get to use "God Bless America" a lot, "Son of a Biscuit" has also crossed my lips. My father uses "Well I'll be John Brown!" I don't know who John Brown is but when my Southern Baptist dad yelled that we would duck and cover! I too use frell and schei ( think that's how it's spelled) One of the kindergarten aides is German so when I use schei around her she cracks up. I'll have to remember zut, that's a good one too.
What a fun thread. ; )
For really bad situations I usually go with "For the love of all that is good and holy!!" but I'll also scream out "Monkey!", too. But then again, my family uses "monkey" for everything- it's also a term of endearment and our response when we don't know the real answer (Q:"What time is it?" A:"Monkey time").
"John Brown"! LOL! I've heard that one a ton! I don't use it but I know plenty of people who do.
"I'll be John Brown!" is a pretty southern expression.
My dad is a pastor and he uses flapdoodle where other men might swear a big D. He is also fond of "great-grandmother's big red toe" as well. I always like "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" but it really can only be said successfully with an Irish accent.
Video of wacky pugs:
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4173532/11233057
I thought people here would appreciate it.
I, too, just registered to respond to this topic :)
One of my favorites is to just mutter: Muttermutter MUTTER muttermutter. A step beyond that is the almost-too-real-sounding "mutter futter".
Back in junior high, a couple of my friends came up with some good ones. One went a little too far into the word hell before trying to back out and came out with "what the hel...keck." Another had a whole list of made-up CWRs, one of which I adopted as a nickname for someone I didn't particularly care for - "fuddlebutt".
After the Jack Sparrow movies came out I have taken to use the word "bugger" a lot. I know exactly what it means and that I probably shouldn't use it in the UK. As I live in Denmark it's fairly safe since not all people know what it means, and as a plus it's very safe around small kids.
I really haven't been using any CRW's myself, but I have seen plenty of funny ones in my time. Those used in the webcomics Userfriendly, Schlock Mercenary and Turn Signals On A Land Raider (TSOALR) really cracks me up. Especially ones like "Emperor's Pancreas!" and "Flippin' God Bits!"
By the way, my uncle once told me about one of his former colleages when he was night watch. This guy was a weight lifter in his spare time so he was very big. The kind of guy that you would step aside for in the street just because of his sheer size. That guy was actually a very gentle bloke and didn't like to swear. Instead he taken to use the most unusual phrase my uncle had ever heard. It goes something like this and was said very fast. I've never heard it myself or even seen it in writing, so I'm spelling it just like it sounds : "Snuurly-magapong-delafifi-orjababa". True story - I think....
And yes, I think this is the coolest blog entry yet! ;-)
J.D. "Iliad" Frazer over at User Friendly uses "Ye flippin' gods!"
This thread has made me pay more attention to CWR all around me.
I heard someone give an old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan "OOM-GAWA!" just yesterday. Just think, when Johnny wanted to cut loose he could use his trademark Tarzan yell. It supposedly saved his life in Panama once. The story goes that angry Panamanians had surrounded the US ambassador's open-top car and were going to turn it over or worse. Johnny stood up in the back seat and gave his Tarzan yell and, all of a sudden, the crowd turned into smiling autograph seekers.
"John Brown"! LOL! I've heard that one a ton! I don't use it but I know plenty of people who do.Yep, we are pretty Southern, even though most folks don't think of Floridians as southerners, we native born are! My husband is from Ohio, I was telling him and his parents how my students were driving me crazy and I told the students, "ya'll hush!" My lovely new family busted out laughing, they thought "ya'll hush" was just too cute, guess it was too Southern for them. They still tease me about it 15 years later."I'll be John Brown!" is a pretty southern expression.
I had a non-cussing high school friend who said "hot flippin' dang" (he probably still says it).
I once heard my Grandfather say while getting lost on the way to the 1984 World's Fair "Jesus H Tap-Dancing Christ" in regards to my Grandmother's poor map reading/directional skills! To this day it remains my favorite.
I remember when you guys (WW) had Penny Arcade on your podcast a while back, and Jerry had mentioned that his dad never cussed. He had continued with a story about his dad driving a nail through his thumb, and proceeded to call the nail gun a "turkey". For whatever reason, that killed me. :)
Oh, also the replacement for the f-bomb in the TV edited version of "The Breakfast Club" was "flip". That turned out to be pretty interesting, especially when Molly Ringwald's character started to cry and go off on Judd Nelson's character, calling him a "motherflippin' jerk!" ...loved that....
~N
Curses! I was hoping somebody would reveal the mysterious locations of these Hobnob sightings. Does the proliferation of Hobnobs mean Hobnobs wouldn't be as appreciated as a gift at Comic-Cons? Actually "HOBNOBS!" sounds like a great curse replacement to me.
I once worked with a woman that said sugerjets a lot. No idea what it meant, but I have caught myself using it.
My personal CWRs always have something to do with monkeys. Monkeybutts (most commonly), oh monkey, jumping monkeys on brooms, things like this. I don't know why I chose to pick on the poor monkeys...but I was glad to see I was not alone. :)
Like an earlier commenter, I also created an account today just so I could post a response to this particular topic. (This really is the greatest blog ever!)
1. Real example: As it happens, just a few days ago my younger daughter - having caught me uttering an "unreplaced" cuss word - suggested "Strawberry shortcake!" instead. So I've been trying to adopt that phrase as a CWR, because I find it quite charming.
(Later it was revealed that a friend had actually advised my daughter to say "Sherbet!” as a CWR, and of course when she couldn’t remember that particular word, she improvised. I think I like “Strawberry shortcake!” better anyway - another fine example of the Folk Process in action.)
2. Made-up examples: While I was looking at the title of this topic, it occurred to me that “blogging” would be a pretty cool CWR.
Here’s another one that I’ve never heard, but might like to try myself: “Shibboleth”. I imagine it might be kind of peculiarly self-referential to whoever heard me say it.
P.S. - Dave, I love love love the strip, and talked my mom into giving my older daughter the first four *Sheldon* books as a big ol' birthday/Christmas present this year. Luckily she's a fast reader; I got to read them as soon as she was done.
My chosen cuss replacement is a very simple "poop." I also rather enjoy "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries," but that one doesn't quite roll off the tongue when you are quite incensed. If I'm truly mad and not around sensitive ears, forget the cuss replacement 'cause I'm usin' the real thing!
I've a tendency to bawl out 'what the devil' (in English and in Irish depending upon the amount of drink I've taken), or... and this is a bit embarrassing:
janeymac.
:S
Seriously, it was out of a burning need to stop a work mate from going up in flames whenever I'd yelp a commission of blasphemy. His hair would go curlier - it was alarming.
This is aimed @ Sixter:
I don't know where you reside, but here in Texas any Fiesta carries the Hobnobs in the British section of the international aisles.
They've carried them for years & I didn't try them until Senor Kellett 'tooned about them. :)
The are definitely scrumdiddlyumptious!!! The one's that have chocolate on them are sweeter than the regular Hobnob, but they are both so VERY TASTY!!
And I keep coming back to this post to see what new CWRs show up. Great jorb everyone!! lol
This year I have been getting a good laugh out of a commercial on TV for KFC up here in Canada. In it an elf is constantly "cursing" about things that happen to him at work. I especially like when he is told that the boss wants him to work late due to a holiday rush. His response - "Mistleto Fruitcake!" Cracks me up every time.
I've been using "Son of a biscuit!" a lot at work, and was beside myself as I read through the archives and realized I probably picked it up from Gramps. Another one I use when things get really bad (especially at work) is "Fudgy Monkeys!"
The first car I bought that I liked was an 85 VW Scirocco that hadn't been taken care of. I dumped a lot of money into that car just to keep it running well, and very early on decided I should name the car Pete, so that when something happened like the shifter dropping through the floorboards to the ground or the clutch cable simultaneously snapping in 7 different places, I could yell either "for the love of Pete!" or "for Pete's sake" in case my mom or another cuss-sensitive person was in the car with me.
One I picked up from the Ask a Ninja Christmas special last year was when Santa said "Oh fiddlebottom"
I also use bollocks and bugger a lot in the company of people who don't really know much about the UK.
In high school, "snuh" was the catchall replacement amongst my little group of friends, so "what the snuh?" could quite often be heard around that locker block.
At work we've been known to use the names of particularly pain in the butt clients as curses or insults, usually heard as someone picks up the top ad in the basket and exclaims something along the lines of "Freaking Edward Jones" or "Son of a Simonsons"
Son of a stapler, scrabble-frabble and jingle-jerry are also favorites.
