Veto is a four-letter word (google quickview, here's the PDF):.Governor Schwarzenegger of California, at odds with the state legislature but ever the poet, vetoes Assembly Bill 1176 with a nice little acrostic.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Oct 28, 2009 - 72 comments

Van Morrison loses it on stage. An analysis by Geoffrey K. Pullum [more inside]
posted by Shepherd on Jul 29, 2009 - 146 comments

Every Swear Word from The Sopranos there is nothing left to be said, other than NSFW...
posted by HuronBob on Feb 9, 2009 - 69 comments

The current FCC case [PDF] before the U.S. Supreme Court presents a fascinating dilemma for the judges: how do you respectfully discuss the legality of profane words in the nation's highest court? And for reporters: how do you report on the specifics of the case? It seems decisions vary across publications: NYT, Washington Post (reg req), LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, AP, McClatchy. As for the judges themselves, they opted to allow only substitute terms. PDF transcript with word count at bottom. Background.
posted by Tehanu on Nov 6, 2008 - 26 comments

Culture en péril - In these Canadian election times and in response to the recent Culture cuts from Conservatives - three of the best Quebec talents in music, theater and humor join forces and hit back hard (lol) with a highly satirical imagining of the replacement program (captioned).
posted by zenzizi on Sep 20, 2008 - 18 comments

Fuck Planet Earth. The extreme beauty of the popular Planet Earth series comes alive with this comedic bit that simply repeats the F-bomb to great effect. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Jan 26, 2008 - 106 comments

Language log has uncovered the reason for the inappropriately common appearance of the word fuck in English translations on Chinese signs. One more Chinglish phenomenon explained.
posted by hindmost on Dec 9, 2007 - 72 comments

"In terms of language, it is also the most offensive official Major League baseball document that we have ever seen." An auction house obtains a one page letter sent to baseball players in 1898, outlining the league's new anti-cursing policy. Includes lots of examples of the kind of language that is not allowed. Nervous auctioneers not sure how to exhibit it. Purely of historical interest, naturally. [more inside]
posted by LobsterMitten on Dec 2, 2007 - 86 comments

Why We Curse. An article by Steven Pinker, exploring the roots of modern "dirty words" and the psychohistory of how and why we use the expletives we use. [more inside]
posted by BeerFilter on Oct 10, 2007 - 72 comments

"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too." The World Bank opted to fuck with Wolfowitz anyway.
posted by chunking express on May 15, 2007 - 93 comments

As an interesting follow-up to the excellent post about Fuck law from last year, a controversy is brewing about the article's scholarly merit. Brian Leiter issued his Most Downloaded Law Faculty Rankings and excluded Ohio State and Emory because their "presence in the top 15 was due entirely to one provocatively titled article by Christopher Fairman who teaches at Ohio State and is visiting at Emory; without Fairman’s paper, neither Ohio State nor Emory would be close to the top 15." There has been some dispute over Leiter's omission of the two faculties on that basis. Fairman weighed in on the issue with his new article Fuck and Faculty Rankings.
posted by dios on Apr 27, 2007 - 37 comments

"The word "fuck" and its variations were spoken 281 times in this movie." Video, sound, wildly NSFW. Like, happy Friday, man.
posted by maryh on Jul 21, 2006 - 97 comments

Job? Fuck it. from Packard Jennings. Also, A Day At The Mall. (Mildly NSFW due to cartoon nudity and copulation. But, screw it, y'know? via.)
posted by loquacious on Jul 11, 2006 - 27 comments

Fuck law.
posted by dios on May 31, 2006 - 66 comments

"She was released this morning, she's talked to her father and she's fine" Jill Carroll has been released and is safe. [newsfilter]
posted by stilgar on Mar 30, 2006 - 79 comments

Fuck Christmas. Via del.icio.us.
posted by MarkO on Dec 15, 2005 - 170 comments

"Please don't FUCK the pigeons." You'll never look at signs the same way again.
_{(probably nsfw - but I guess I already blew that...)}
posted by bk on Jul 19, 2005 - 44 comments

Is your favorite swear word losing its potency? Stock up on some new ones with the Swearsaurus, a "vast array of swearing, profanity, obscenity, blasphemy, cursing, cussing, and insulting in a massive 165 languages"
posted by Quartermass on Feb 27, 2005 - 21 comments

Fuck it ...the word game
posted by ColdChef on Aug 27, 2004 - 13 comments

Have you heard of Fucking? In Austria? According to Wikipedia, Fucking's sign is "the most often stolen street sign in Austria". Despite the cost of constantly replacing the sign, however, residents of the small village thankfully refuse to change its name.
posted by reklaw on Jun 16, 2004 - 43 comments

Screw Howard Stern. But Save Sandra Tsing Loh!
The radio culture wars have claimed an unlikely victim, and an unlikely victimizer (America's favorite NPR station, KCRW).
posted by wendell on Mar 5, 2004 - 33 comments

Your tax dollars at work. The Republican congress and the FCC, who evidently have nothing better to do, want to waste time banning the word fuck from all radio and broadcast television.
posted by johnnydark on Jan 14, 2004 - 38 comments

Oh fuck! Are you interested? Let me guess: you're 18 to 34 years old, right? Oh it's a dandy little word, for sure. But is it enough? Here's yet another brilliant marketing idea dreamt up by the 35-50 thoroughly fucked-up Texan reader-research crowd! [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Nov 22, 2003 - 23 comments

Further verification that fuck is fucked. The gradual emasculation of a word once obscene.
posted by the fire you left me on Oct 22, 2003 - 54 comments

This is really, really f------ brilliant. The FCC says the f-word is OK on network TV, as long as it doesn't refer to the sexual act. Naturally, some groups don't like dirty talk. Is this a sea change in the level of discourse, or is the FCC finally acknowledging that it's useless to protect kids from our favorite four-letter word? (Second link is a .pdf file.)
posted by sixpack on Oct 8, 2003 - 104 comments

A 'cussing canoeist' was almost robbed of his right to swear in public. Timothy Boomer yelled the f word close to 75 times in front of a 5 and 2 yo after falling out of his canoe on the Rifle River in Michigan. I damn near fell of my chair laughing!
posted by Why on Apr 1, 2002 - 12 comments

Knowledge is often created by people with too much time on their hands. This week's best example of this [old but obscure] is the Linux Kernel Fuck Count, an elegant graphing of the trends towards this particular obscenity showing up in kernel code [charted against the appearances of the word "love" just for kicks] over successive releases -- .01 to 2.2.16. Oh yeah, there's some other statistical info collected as well.
posted by jessamyn on Jul 5, 2001 - 9 comments

You Stupid #@$! In England, children are learning how to swear. What the #@%&? Aren't they learning enough of this #@&! on the street? I believe that the standards for streets smarts have really slipped over the years. Children should be learning their four letter words at the same place they learn about sex, on the street!
posted by aj100 on Jul 2, 2001 - 9 comments

Britain's Favorite Word? According to Bob Geldof, it starts with an "F". Finally, a rock star making a positive contribution...
But will he be sued for trademark infringement by George Carlin?
posted by wendell on May 17, 2000 - 6 comments