Of course I started watching ‘Luke Cage’ because of the music. An absolutely beautiful blend of black genres! Made me sway side to side, bounce on the sofa, it even made my partner move his feet rhythmically… Not a usual occurance. Well done Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge! Well done, indeed. The rest of the show wasn’t bad either. Just as entertaining as the rest of Marvel productions. What I particularly liked was how nicely Luke kept his cool. Up to a point anyway. A big bulletproof dude in a hoodie chasing bad guys, kicking butts, catching granades and containing the explosion in his hands, and the only ‘swearword’ he uses is ‘sweet Christmas’? I mean, this sh*#@ is cool! Ok, I think he said something nasty to his dad once.
I love quasi-dirty words and euphemisms. We have some incredibly to-the-point and hilarious ones in Polish. It’s a great pity that I can’t share them with you, guys. Well, I could but they are untranslatable and culture-specific. Exclamations like ‘butterfly leg!’ or ‘let cannonballs / bullets hit me!’ neither sound good in English, nor do they carry the same semantic and emotional load as their Polish counterparts.
Probably for many of you this topic doesn’t seem very Christmasy but let’s be realistic about it! Firstly, contrary to what you can see on TV, Christmas time is a very stressful and nerve-wracking time of year. It didn’t use to be when I was a little girl and there was hardly anything to buy… although, surprisingly, we never lacked anything. My parents seemed to know all the right people: the butcher’s daughter, the milkman’s wife’s cousin, uncle Stefan’s greataunt who lived in America, you name it! They managed to get us all we needed. An, man, oh man, did they know how to throw a party! The tables were brimming with food and booze.
I’m absolutely positive that all my Polish friends still associate the smell of oranges or tangerines with Christmas. And the taste of those bananas that we could have only once in a blue moon… Now: a banana-tangerine-vanilla vegan smoothie 3 times a day? Yes, please! Life was simpler back in the days… Ok, great story, grandma! Everything is simple when you are a child, so there’s no need to romanticise the past, I suppose.
However, back to why Christmas time may kill you. It is hectic as hell: buying presents, getting the best food (and lots of it!), grinding poppy-seeds with rasins, baking cakes, cleaning windows, attending numerous X-mas parties, getting over that mulled wine aftertaste, decorating Christmas trees, killing carps, wishes, greetings, baby Jesuses… Not to mention animals speaking on Christmas Eve. What is that about?! Statistics show that there is a spike in cardiac deaths (among other factors) around that blessed time. Hearts may perhaps be failing ‘cause of all that merriment, although paint me skeptical! And please don’t tell me that you all can keep a poker face when confronted with the Christmas madness. I’m absolutely sure that a few juicy elaborate insults or invectives try to crawl onto your silent lips, when you see another Santa ho-ho-hoing right at you.
All those happy families running around their lush Christmas trees, chasing their perfectly-groomed dogs, teasing one another over a pile of presents. A figment of some crazy-ass dillusional maniac’s imagination beautifully woven into a neat internet provider commercial. But people watch these commercials and – sure as I love Bushmaster’s accent – get depressed over their loneliness, wasted chances, dreams they once had, or that they should have bought that green reindeer jumper instead of the red one. I gather these moments don’t inspire pretty words either.
Conclusion: Christmas time gives you a lot of reasons to swear, but it’s also the time when you shouldn’t – more than at any other time of year. Isn’t it the time of love, joy, and doing good onto others? Yeah, sure, swear if you like, but since there are usually some children around you might have to watch your tongue. Enter: Euphemisms.
A. Something for a hectic time:
shit: shoot, shiitake (my favourite), snap
fuck: flip, frack, frick, the f-word, fudge
fuck off: eff off or any of the above + off
fucking: flipping, fracking, fricking
son of a bitch: son of a gun, SOB
damn it: darn it
shut the fuck up: shut the front door
B. Something for family Christmas table gossip:
fart: break wind, cut the cheese
brief sex: wham bam and thank you ma’am
(have) sex: roll in the hay, go all the way, hanky-panky, have it away, have it off, knock boots
pregnant: have a bun in the oven, in the club, knocked up
pornography: adult entertainment
prostitute: comfort woman, street walker
be sterile: shoot blanks
die: pass away, kick the bucket, bite the dust, turn up your toes, snatched from us, cash in one’s chips, cross over the other side, meet one’s maker
genitalia: private parts
with a large penis: well-hung, well-endowed, PhD = pretty huge dick
brothel: house of ill repute
stolen / acquired illegally: fallen off the back of a lorry (BrE) / truck (AmE)
fat: big-boned, built for comfort not speed, well-fed, full-figured, horizontally challenged
unemployed: between jobs, between projects
C. Miscellaneous (for any occasion)
short: vertically challenged
short-sighted: visually challenged
liar: economical with the truth
kissing: first base
defecate: do your business, unloose the caboose, call one’s agent, download some software, release the Kraken
need to defecate or urinate: call of nature
stupid:
not the sharpest tool in the box, not the brightest light on a
Christmas tree, if
brains were chocolate – he wouldn’t have enough to fill an M&M,
keeps
his/her brain in mint condition, the
wheel is spinning but the hamster’s dead… the list is endless, so
just a teaser here.
There are – of course – countless euphemisms for countless improper or vulgar words. To be honest, I had difficulties selecting a respectable sample. Share your favourite euphemisms and enrich my symbolic list!