Alternatives to cuss words

Pennguin

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Maybe I missed it, but I have some thoughts.

Pirates are, of course, stereotyped these days. But pirates as we know them in classic literature were also caricatures of real pirates. Seen as dirty, uneducated, and merciless, real pirates were often no more or less hygienic than other sailors. Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, the infamous captain, was highly educated. Of course, what pirates did was illegal, but they were smugglers, and why fight if you can slip through Johnny Law's watchful gaze? Pirates were often content to leave the law to themselves, and engineered ways of doing so (like flying under false flags in certain waters). Many could and would fight if necessary, having been part of various navies at some point, but most would have rather completed a job without a fight.

Yes, there were violence-loving pirates closer to the stereotype, and yes, some of the "piratin' and pillagin'" did take place. They certainly weren't wholesome folk, but they weren't always the "scalliwags" of legend. Many ships had democratic processes to elect a captain, and decisions were often made with input from the crew. Some captains shared information as a matter of course to deter mutiny, rather than risk it. If all your men have all the same information, then what's the point of mutiny? You kill the captain, and you've only cut out one share. I'm sure that happened, but not as often as we're led to believe.

Believe it or not, some pirate ships even had a chaplain of sorts, to perform funerals, weddings, and the like. Sometimes the captain served that role. Kind of like many Irish or Hispanic gangs in the United States, they have a strange amalgamation of a religious sense with a criminal lifestyle. I've seen gang members swear by their crucifix to keep them safe from death. They accept their punishment of incarceration as God's will. I've personally known gang members who believed God wouldn't allow them to be killed or arrested until it was their time, and it was all for a purpose, in their mind.

All that to say that your pirates don't need to swear to be believable. If you want to chart a course closer to the stereotype, check out the insanely popular Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The dialog is witty, humorous, and to my recollection, devoid of any swearing.

In closing, one side note I also didn't see mentioned: "Bloody" came from denoting those of "special" blood (i.e., aristocrats, royalty, etc.). In a pejorative sense, it was used to say someone was acting snooty or spoiled, in the manner of those who thought, by virtue of their lineage, they were better than everyone else. "You bloody jerk" would indicate someone was being a jerk by acting like someone seen as spoiled. It was seen as taboo in a time when the public standards were very prudish. In my estimation, it is equitable to "spoiled," if it can be equated to anything we have in common English today. It's more often used as a rude intensifier, about as rude as "crap."

You wouldn't necessarily use "crap" in front of polite company or kids, but it's not the worst thing you could say.
 

scifi_boy2002

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How about the phrase "chicken gravels"? Kind of sounds like something a pirate would say. Where I got it from was when I was young, my younger brother (he was about 4 years old at the time) picked up some bad words and would say them in public. It was embarrassing when he would say them in public, of course. Instead of punishing him, my father told him that it was ok to use those bad words, but for him to never, ever say the worse bad word of all--chicken gravels. From then on, my little brother would only say chicken gravels instead of the other real bad words. I remember how funny it was when we were little watching my brother get mad at something a shout "chicken gravels".
 

Dennis E. Taylor

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"Chicken Gravel" alternatives can be used for humor, as well. In my WIP, one character makes a statement, and another character replies "Horse cookies!" It's obviously a placeholder for an expletive, but it works in context. Might not work so well when you're portraying gang members. In such cases, you might say, "Scar spewed a stream of profanity, then stalked off, still muttering."
 
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what can work is have them prep to say something scathing but get interrupted. so say- Listen up you no good-, then have someone cut them out so its left to the audience to imagine what they were going to say
 

DuncanClinch

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Could you have another character interrupt the cussing character every time the cussing starts? What about giving the cussing character a quirk that makes him choke or sneeze or something every time he tries to say something?
 

Twick

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It depends on how clean you want to keep it. Some of the classic pirate talk is essentially nautical metaphor. For example, "you scurvy bilgewipe" would probably pass in a middlegrade book, but is still harsh enough as a physical descriptor (someone showing the physical deterioration of scurvy) with something disgusting (dirty bilgewater). The advantage of this is that it gives a lot of colour to the speech, as opposed to using common 21st century swearing that every small boy knows by heart.
 

L.C. Blackwell

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In 18th century England, you could be fined if caught swearing in public, with increasing fines for the number of offenses. So occasionally you find very creative workarounds like "dash my wig" in place of "damn my head," and "rammed"--presumably, instead of "damned." Calling a fractious youngster "a young limb" referred to "limb of Satan." A sluttish woman might be a "draggle-tailed sheep."

Depending on the culture you want to develop, it just might not be all that socially acceptable to swear, even among pirates. Sometimes, even when people are engaging in criminal behavior, they are anxious to avoid anything that identifies them as being lower class. So if your pirates are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and kill--so long as they can do it with a gentlemanly swagger--they still might avoid language that sounds "low." This can be quite funny if played for the right effect.
 

iszevthere

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I have no ideas, but I caution making them up without researching if they resemble a word in an actual language. It seems really tough, which is why I never wrote out made-up swearwords, but just wrote, "(character) said something horrible," or some such. Case in point: In Eoin Colfer's first novel in the Artemis Fowl series, the word "D'Arvit" was a foul word, ostensibly made up. The Hebrew word "V'arvit" is a real word related to "evening", and I was very unhappy with Eoin Colfer's deeply unfortunate implication. I do remember that in a DVD commentary of "Star Wars," Jabba the Hut spoke an actual language from India--Tamil, I think, and the writers spoke at length of why they picked that language and how it was being used. If you do wind up using words from other languages, I strongly recommend using the language site linguee.com. It provides context and multiple meanings and options. Please stay away from Google Translate. FreeDict.com can be okay. I hope this helps!
 

katfireblade

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Something I've noticed in fantasy novels is people curse by what's most important to them.

For instance, in Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, dragons are all important to the survival of humans, so one of the most frequently used curse words is "Shells!" In reference to dragon eggs, of course. :) In Anne Bishop's Ephemera series, the world has been shattered into pieces, and magical people known as Guardians and Guides are the ones who keep everything pieced together, so of course one of their curse words is "Guides and Guardians!" Of the shattered pieces, there are light landscapes and dark landscapes, and winding up in a dark landscape can be pretty terrible, so another curse they have is "Daylight!"

All pretty innocent to us, but we see the logic in it as readers, because we do the same thing. Americans are most likely to swear using some figure from Christianity ("God!" "Jesus Christ!") or a place ("Hell!") or religious action ("D*mn!") or by sex (F-bomb ahoy!). Two things that obsess us are religion and sex. This pattern is repeated in history, where more devout folks than us got a lot more creative ("By the devil's hairy arse!"), and I've also seen it reflected in other parts of the world.

If you want curse words but want to keep it light, decide what's important to your characters. Do they superstitiously worship any form of sea god? They could curse by that ("By Poseidon's trident/hairy nostrils/barnacled bum!"). They could also curse by what's important to them or by what they fear most ("Sails and stormy waters!"). It really depends on what's appropriate in your world.

Also, for some truly nasty insults that use few, if any, current curse words, check out insults thrown in Shakespeare's plays. I mean, seriously, the man could craft an insult:


  • “Away, you starvelling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish!”
  • “Peace, ye fat guts!”
  • “Poisonous bunch-backed toad!"
  • “That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey Iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?”
  • “Thine face is not worth sunburning.”
  • “Thou cream faced loon”
  • “Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!”
  • “Thou leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, knot-pated, agatering, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish pouch!”
  • “Thou lump of foul deformity”
  • “You poor, base, rascally, cheating lack-linen mate!"
  • “You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish–O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!”
  • “Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after voyage.”
  • “Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese.”
  • “Villain, I have done thy mother”

If you're looking into things that can be said during altercations, you could do worse than making up a few insults like these. He took what was considered disgusting, offensive, or beneath contempt and had a field day using those comparisons to insult people. It would work, and it might even go well the stereotypical pirate lingo.