Ask Lemmy

I think you're going about this the wrong way. If you've ever heard a quebecer curse, you know that religious curses are the absolute best.

I had a franco sergeant in basic training; this charismatic 22nd-regiment killing machine who got seriously next-level expressive one day and all but peeled the paint off the walls. I knew a lot of French back then, and I only caught most of it as it was so fast, so angry; it was snarling and visceral and seething for 0715.

What I did catch was religious. All of it. I'm surprised I'm alive today. I'm surprised I wasn't brutally murdered on the spot. I'm glad I wore the brown pants.

I think you're severely limiting yourself by leaving that nuke in the silo; that's all I'm saying.

I don't think being 'non-religious' mean we should give up on words used religious people.

Believers in one god or another don't own those words. Non of them. They belong to all of us. They're words that belong to our common vocabulary and language. Nobody should be allowed to claim any ownership and exclusive usage.

If we start creating different vocabularies depending one's own system of beliefs, if we start limiting the use of certain words to certain groups of people (religious or, say, related to this or that specific color), where will that end? And then what common ground will we have remaining? What common language? How will we be able to keep on discussing together if we don't share the same language?

To use a Biblical reference, do we really want to create a new Tower of Babel and... are we that pretentious we think can act like if we were a god ourselves? God damn, I certainly don't. Heck, no. Fuck that.

That's just my 2 cents, obviously.

Shazbot

When I swear, I tend to use "fuck" or "bitch", and maybe "shit"

I use "fucking terts" when I'm angry at a specific person ("terts" is a derogatory term for earth humans (from Alien Nation), and "furless human" when I'm in a slightly amused mood (it's what my cat used to curse me).

Blathering Blatherskites!
Great Scott! Great Googly Moogly Narf! Blech Hot Dog! Hot diggity! Salad! Biscuits! Corn Nuggets! Nerfherder Awoooguhhhh! Ballyhoo Farfegnugen To the mattresses! What in tarnation? Shoo whee

I got tired of trying, live in the Bible belt and grew up with all those words as my lexicon.

God damn, oh god, Jesus christ, etc. If anything feels good because religious people dislike it lol

Could you replace them with the swear words you don't mind saying? Or am I not understanding what you're looking for?

e.g. "For Christ sake" can be replaced with, "for fuck sake".

Meanwhile French Quebec curse words are entirely made of religious words.

Hosti de sacrifice de câlice de tabarnak!!!

I know a pastor that will say “mother father!” in lieu of motherfucker

Avis: Vous avez été exilé de [email protected]

Notice: You have been exiled from [email protected]

Shut The Front Door!

I’ll admit I lurked a bit to see if you’re US- based and it looks like you are. Maybe instead of “Jesus Christ” you can use “Abraham Lincoln?”

Like “Abraham fucking Lincoln in a cabin made of shit logs” could be a satisfactory expression of frustration.

Any name you can remember easily could work; Billy Crystal, Woody Guthrie, Greta Thunberg, even your neighbors or pets’ names.

The others will be a bit tough since they’re so ingrained in our culture but depending how “non-religious” you intend to be you can switch to “curse/hex” and wean yourself off of that into something more secular ¯\(ツ)/¯

I'm sorry but although your objective is to rewire your neurons, in order to be understood by others with precision you would have to first change culture - and that takes a long, long time.

So in English you probably don't have good substitutes that don't sound religious outside of those you already mentioned and their varieties. I'd be asking a similar question to people who speak other languages, that can be fun to explore and see what other cultures use instead of "fucking hell" or "holy shit" if they have translatable expressions that don't include anything religious.

Jesus fuck is generally my 'surprised' swear.

German has a rich vocabulary of non-religious swears:

https://dein-sprachcoach.de/schimpfwoerter-jetzt-wird-es-schmutzig/

Jesus titty fucking Christ can be any name you want.

Alan Davies from QI taught me that instead of "shut the fuck up!" one can say "shut the front door!"

“Aw biscuits”

Well, boy howdy!

My favorite come from one of my favorite TV shows, Red Dwarf.

Smeg

cheese and rice!

Frack. Dank Farrik. Sleemo. Kriff.

Here's a dictionary of them. - https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Fictional_English_curse_words

"Oh, beans" is a good one for replacing the "I screwed up" meaning of"damn it".

Just say "fuck."