When researchers asked people around the world to list every taboo word they could think of, the differences that emerged were revealing. The length of each list, for example, varied widely.
While native English speakers in the UK and Spanish speakers in Spain rattled off an average of 16 words, Germans more than tripled this with an average of 53 words ranging from intelligenzallergiker, a person allergic to intelligence, to hodenkobold, or “testicle goblin”, someone who is being annoying.
The results, researchers say, hint at how the overlooked field of social faux pas – whether it be swearing, insults or other off-limit language – can help us better understand the values, boundaries and shifting norms that shape different cultures.
“These words can be more offensive, or less, they can be loaded with negativity or with irony,” said Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, a cognitive scientist and professor at Madrid’s Nebrija University. “But taken together, they offer small snapshots of the realities of each culture.”
When it came to the differences between Spanish and German speakers, Andoni Duñabeitia had two theories. German, with its seemingly endless capacity to build new compound words, could simply offer more options, he said. “But it could also be that some people [speaking other languages] just don’t have these words readily available, or it’s harder for them when asked to produce them in a very neutral environment,” he said.
The study, which looked at taboo words in 13 languages from Serbian to Cantonese and Dutch, and across 17 countries, revealed other differences. The word “shit”, or its translated equivalent, for example, ranked among the most frequently used in several languages, including English, Finnish and Italian, but was not in the top rankings in French, Dutch, Spanish or German.
In contrast, words that sought to disparage women, such as “bitch,” turned up across cultures. “I think it comes down to the terribly sexist traditions of many countries,” said Andoni Duñabeitia, who was among the four dozen researchers involved with the 2024 study. “The vocabulary reflects the reality of societies where women have been mistreated, removed from everyday tasks and relegated to the background.”
Sexual terms also came up repeatedly, hinting at a near-universal discomfort with topics perceived to be private or indecent.
Other words, such as “feminazi”, revealed how words evolve alongside social and political change. In the current era of social media platforms, and the anonymity they often offer, researchers also traced a proliferation and hardening of the language used, laying bare how taboo words can be weaponised to target people based on race, religion, gender or sexuality.
When Simone Sulpizio, a psychology professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca and lead author of the 2024 study, launched into the research, he expected to hear a cacophony of expletives related to the church. “But we were surprised because, while blasphemy was present in all of the languages, it was only among the most frequent in Italy,” said Sulpizio.
The Italians who were part of the study offered up more than 24 taboo words related to the church, including 17 different versions of what researchers translated as “fucking God”.
Sulpizio speculated it might be because of Italy’s proximity and longstanding relationship with the Vatican, as well as the enduring strength of Catholic tradition in the country. “So that’s an example of the impact of cultural or societal differences,” he said.
Another difference was in the way people used insults. “Everybody has slurs, but depending on the culture of the country, the target of the slur changes,” said Sulpizio.
The research suggested a handful of constants that hold across most cultures: men are more likely to use taboo words than women, as are extroverts. On average, people swear once for every two minutes of speech. This rate, however, can vary widely depending on the setting, the topic and the relationship between those in the conversation.
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What makes taboo words fascinating is that unlike most other parts of our vocabularies, they can be used positively or negatively, said Sulpizio. They hold extraordinary power, say researchers, who say they can be wielded to inflict harm or rattle power structures or, in turn, relieve stress and elicit humour.
Swearing could even confer physical benefits, Sulpizio said, citing a study that asked people to say a normal word or a taboo word while holding their hand in ice.
“When they produced the taboo word, they were able to keep their hand longer in the ice,” he said. “So these words can be used as kind of an emotional regulation tool.”
Their wide range of uses could help to explain the persistence of these words, even as generations of parents, teachers and authority figures have actively discouraged their use and traces of them are wiped from formal written texts.
“Usually the most frequently used words of a language are the most familiar words. But with taboo words, this relationship is the opposite,” Sulpizio said. “So the more familiar the taboo words are, or the more known they are, the less frequently they tend to be written in newspapers or blogs or anything like that.”
The team behind a 2022 study found the use of taboo words can deeply affect the way we think, act and relate to one another. “Swearing was long dismissed as a topic of serious research because it was assumed to be simply a sign of aggression, weak language proficiency or even low intelligence,” researchers noted recently in the Conversation. “We now have quite a lot of evidence that challenges this view, prompting us to reconsider the nature – and power – of swearing.”
