Hello everyone! I have been reading the Legend of the Guardians series, and I noticed something that really caught my eye! In this book, the author decided to make some vulgar or "bad" words that weren't vulgar in our language! For example: Racdrops, Frink, Sprink, and many other words are "bad" in these books, and I was wondering: Does your story have any fake vulgar words? How did you come up with them? How "bad" are they?

As far as I know this is all I have done of that sort. Huvuraft is beginning to curse in another language. It was not exclamatory, but was more of what Rab-Shakeh did. There are two times that I can remember in the Bible where exclamatory foul language is used, and both times the Bible does not quote it; it says what they did, rather than what they said:

1 Samuel 17:43 And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
44 And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.

Mark 14:70 And he denied it again. And a little after, they that stood by said again to Peter, Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilaean, and thy speech agreeth thereto.
71 But he began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak.

There is something different about exclamatory cursing, swearing, blasphemy and so on, that is different from the argumentative sort, and I do not believe it should be written, maybe not even in another language. The argumentative sort would be like this:

Exodus 5:2 And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go.


Something interesting: the Bible gives a list of abominations at one point, and says that they are the specific abominations that he is punishing the Canaanites for, and in that list in the middle of all kinds of sexual abominations it says that they took the name of the LORD in vain:

Leviticus 18:21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
...27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;)
28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.

Wonderful, informative post there, Tsahraf. Thank you!

That's really interesting, Tsahraf!

*Agrees* Thank you for posting that, Tsa. Gives us some interesting thoughts on the matter. *Nods*

That makes sense.

I've heard it said that swears originated from calling on the name of your deity, so "Holy Cow" is from India. Modern swears are basically the same, except in a humanistic society people have switched to invoking the name of refuse and incest or naming that power their own by condemning something directly. I don't know how far I consider this to count... I know not all interjections are wrong (I say rats and shucks but that doesn't mean I worship rodents or corn husks) but it kind of makes you want to think before you say anything.

On the other hand, "By the shucks of <insert corn god>" would be a pretty funny expletive.

Perhaps the best example of this being well-done that I can think of is in (the late) Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, where it's nearly all along the lines of "Shells!", "By the First Shell!", and so on---this being (supposedly) an (if I recall correctly) deliberately-atheistic (thus the complete absence of any references to God) colony that's forgotten its origins, and whose survival depends on the (originally genetically-engineered) dragons. If you're going to use your characters' expletives, oaths, etc., for subtle worldbuilding---and whether or not this is advisable is a good question---I suggest exploring McCaffrey's approach.

Thank you kingjon!

There are, of course, exclamations that are completely innocent, the most obvious one being "Oh!." And there is the exclaiming of random words, as long as you make sure you are not actually using vulgar language. A lot of seemingly nonsense words people say are actually the worst kind of language. An example of how it happens (with something I do not consider as wrong as the rest because it is based on the Catholic religion) is "blimey:" it is actually a slurring of "bloody Mary." I would not use it, because it is vulgar and disrespectful, but I would not use "holy cow" either, because it is connected with Buddhism.

Basically if you hear someone using a nonsense sounding word as an exclamation you need to find out what it means before you use it yourself, though of course the person you hear using it may not know what it means either.

One that is not a wrong exclamation is "yuck," which is an onomatopoeia of vomiting.

I use "akh" usually.

Often growling, slamming something or slapping your forehead stands in for swearing.

Yep. In Riddle of Stars the main character smashed a lot of things.

But none of those are as good as keeping your cool, of course. That character must have had a problem with anger management.

It would also be funny if a character, in a moment of failure, started yelling, "Head-desk! Head-desk!" Of course, that would only make sense in a modern setting.

That sounds very interesting.


*Laughs* Oh dear, that would be funny! The terms you could make up with worldbuilding....

Haha!! That would be hilarious!!! In a short story I made, my main character says "Ugh! Face-palm!".

Heehee! Oh, our chat-wired generation...

Though you realize that some of things that have come from being used on chat, such as face-palm or *does something* are quite understandable (though unfamiliar to different people) and could have come from somewhere other than computer use. It is only that certain devices of language are more likely to be used by people who talk about certain things or communicate in certain ways. For instance, some airplane pilots would use acronyms a lot from using radios.

End of lecturebubble.

I do not write fake vulgar language so much as vulgar I do not know the meaning of.... Sometimes my characters are less than clean. They say things that are less than clean. But I don't translate it, and I don't want to. I don't ask what it means. I suppose that comes out the same as the examples you gave, just sort of a different perspective...

I also have bad words in my books that I do know the meaning of but which I do not translate anyway for the sake of my readers.

Depends on the word. Some are extremely crude, the ones which I do not ask about. Some are not.

There are also some words that are actually very 'bad' that I do translate, because to an English person they aren't bad. I just portray the badness through the affect on the people hearing it there.

Wise choice.

My elves are the only ones so far with an actual "bad" word, which is in the form of an insult. I don't know if it's translated or not, but you learn the meaning through reactions and context.