Just heard an interview of Bobby Bowden and he said "Dad Gumit" and "Dad Gum" were his favorite swear words. I think I know what Freaking, gosh, dang, Gad" are substitutes for, but I'm not sure what "Dad Gumit" and "Dad Gum" are substitutes for? Is there a "Mother Gum?" or a "Mother Gumit"?

As I once had to say when I needed to make a Samuel L Jackson reference on a forum with very strict anti-profanity rules: "I have had it with these muffler-huggin' snakes on this muffin-luggin' plane!"

I had an interesting exchange with my retired-english-teacher aunt one time. I had said "Bull!" to someone's story. She told me to never say that in her presence because it was just short for "BS". She said that when I said "Bull", I was really thinking "BS" – everyone who heard it was thinking ,"BS" – and that all I had done was skirt the letter of the law by not saying it out loud.

I agree with her on most accounts – fudge, fetch, shoot, dang, darn, gosh, etc. – are directly derived and diluted from prevalent profanities, and annoy the heck out of me (oh, and add "heck" to the list).

But a few years later, I read about the old term "Irish Bull", used to mean a tall, unbelievable claim. The story said that "Irish Bull" was shortened to "Bull", then later elongated to "Bullshit" to add strength to the term. I never did summon up the courage to take that story back to my aunt and say, "Look – here's why I can say 'Bull'."

Obligatory quote: "Ooohhh fffuuudddgggeee….only I didn't say fudge."

Garry Shirts said:

Telemath, so your English teacher claims that we can't have it both ways i.e., we can't have the impact and satisfaction of saying swear words and at the same time escape responsibility for saying them. What a party pooper. I wonder if "A Way With Words" has ever asked its listeners to identify unusual substitutes for swear words? I like the sound of Ron Delaney's "muffin-lugin". A Mormon friend of mine used to say"scrud" which I never knew what it was a substitute for if anything.

Then there's the all-purpose "frak" from the Babylon 5 universe.

Also in science fiction, I remember a bit in one of Asimov's stories where a prudish character blurts out "what the Dickens?" and is chastised by someone more earthy who sarcastically points out that "Dickens is just a euphemism for devil, you know".

My English teacher used to say that a person who used profanity didn't have the a large enough vocabulary to adequately express themselves with acceptable words. I would be interested in what others think about that assumption.

I prefer to have the swear words available. I don't go throwing them around at every occasion, which means that when I do use them they should have a much greater impact.

There are some colorful ones I know from Black English, and they show up in songs sometimes as thinly veiled cursing. I think my favorite is "bad motor scooter." I once heard this in a sermon as in "Ahab was one baaad motor scooter."

Another great one is the song lyric "she's a brick (pause) house."

I don't care one way or the other about cursing, but I actually like the kind of word play that results from just-barely-cleaned-up language.