Vanessa Austin Locke: Vanessa finds the right words

I swear. A lot. I always have. I swear liberally and inappropriately and it’s landed me in lots of trouble over the years. But it remains one of my greatest pleasures. It also presents one of my biggest challenges, because most publications don’t let you swear in print and seeing what you can get past an over-worked editor has given me hours of fun.

As much as my potty mouth has landed me in hot water, it’s also got me out of trouble more times than I care to remember when used correctly, conveying humour, indignation or assertion as needed. If I ever reproduce I’ve vowed to teach my child to swear properly. There’s no use pretending naughty words don’t exist, or that children aren’t going to pick them up and want to use them, but what we can do is teach them to use them appropriately.

Swearing can be a great outlet for exasperation, stress and rage, and if used effectively can deliver the sucker punch you want, without the fallout your filthy mouth deserves. It’s an important life skill; being able to identify who you can swear with and who you can’t, or which words to avoid in which parts of town, and at what point in the conversation you can drop the stink bomb. Expletives are valuable members of our vocabulary and deserve our respect.

Over the years I’ve developed a swearing crutch. An arsenal of words I keep stored up to use in place of swear words, some of which had a good airing a couple of weeks ago courtesy of Katie Hopkins-peace-be-with-her. These words have the linguistic ability to convey an exaggerated meaning, whilst getting past the objections on a technicality and undermining any offence by being, what I like to call, cuddly. Here are a few of my favourites…

Cocker – a new entry for me, inspired by my cocker spaniel who I am currently instructing in the art of profanity. She’s really quite good at it and has a genuinely foul mouth. Especially when she eats poo in the park.

Flange – An old favourite and dedicated to my good friend and ex colleague Tegan who I worked with in another life on a woodworking publication. There’s a whole other article on woody innuendos. We had hours of fun. Anyway, a flange is a ridge, designed for strength.

Screaming fannybadger – One for the Americans to whom that word is as innocent as a summer day. Combined with all the force of the brilliant word badger it’s so much fun to say.

Crapulous – Supplied to me by a friend who has made an art form of the intellectually-veiled insult. Crapula is from the Latin and means hangover.

Twerp – From ‘twirp’, a word used to denote a type of racing pigeon that flew between Antwerp and London.
Berk – Commonly spelled now as ‘burk’. It’s from the rhyming slang Berkeley Hunt.

“Wazzock: its correct usage would be to describe a know-it-all”

Wazzock – Sounds like it should be used to describe a moron but actually it’s from the Old High German ‘wizzago’ meaning ‘to know’, so its correct usage would be to describe a know-it-all.

Plonker – This one doesn’t have interesting etymology but it gets in because of Del Boy’s delivery.
Send your best replacement swear words to me via Twitter @vnessenvy.

Image: The Berkeley Hunt is the oldest hunt in the country and can be traced back to the 12th century. Rhyming slang enthusiasts have another use for it…