To cringe when middle class women swear

Dear god is that all you have to worry about!!

I swear all the time- there is nothing that describes life better sometimes than a good old swearword!!

I use to work in a private school (a renowned one) Think of Eton or similar. The female teachers in the department of English at that school swore. In fact, they swore often and with colour. Portmanteau swear words were their speciality.

Swearing is nothing to do with class or vocabulary, and everything to do with whether or not you wish to follow societal expectations / conventions. Some people don’t give a ‘flip’. Quite a lot of affluent landed-gentry types swear a lot.

I’d say that swearing is similar to tattoos. Tattooed people don’t care if you like their tattoos or not.

I think you sound a bit of a snob. Do you correct people’s pronunciation and grammar?

Try being royal (middle class) and northern.

It confuses everyone.

Class is irrelevant but any twee swearing like ‘cockwomble’ or ‘fuckety fuck’ or ‘twatbadger’ or whatever is unbearably naff. People always think they’re being hilarious but no, it’s tedious. It’s the sort of thing you used to see from people with whimsical Twitter accounts in 2010 when they were hoping to get a bursary to join a Radio 4 comedy writing group. It’s swearing for wet men whose sexual persona is ‘Hugh Grant getting flustered at an American in a Richard Curtis movie’ and women who giggle a lot, wear dresses from FatFace and think yarn-bombing is a personality.

Either call someone a cunt or don’t swear at all. This mimsy ‘cockwomble’ bullshit can fuck right off.

If I went on a date with someone who said things like ‘cockwomble’, I’d instantly know they were shit in bed.

These are all excellent questions.

I have a friend that says ‘oh fudge’ in place of fuck. I can’t stand it. If something bad happened like a plate smashed she’d say ‘fudge!’ But if I told her my granny had died she’d tilt her head to the side and say ‘ooooooh fuuuuuudddggge’.

I want to scream ‘for the love of god, just say fuck!! FUCK FUCK FUCK!’

So where are the lines drawn?

Is it OK to swear if you work in an office or do you have to have a blue collar job or private income?
Is it OK to swear in cockney or Scouse but not in RP?
Does having a mortgage preclude you? Or a child in private school?
Is it not acceptable if you have a degree but OK if you have an NVQ in nail tech?

And how the hell do you tell someone’s class from a one line sentence?

"orff you piss" works for me in a middle class voice.

The only rules I have are that I waited untl my kids were at least 14 before I stopped watching my language around them. Have obviously reinfirced the ‘time and place’ rules - not in front of teachers, the MiL, or in a job interview etc, but otherwise swear words are generally just a collection of hard consonants, glottal stops and assigned meanings that, in a thesaurus, have a dozens alternatives that we all understand. Is ‘fuck’ any more offensive than procreate/ copulate/ reproduce, really, on any fundamental level after all? Or ‘bollocks’ any more offensive than male genitalia/ or testicles?

As an English graduate who has observed that most swear words are in print in well respected literary texts eg. Chaucer (the Wife of Bath had serious potty mouth), I feel that the educated middle classes are almost more entitled to swear on the basis of the literary heritage of many of these words.

1. cockwomble is not swearing and I don't think anyone thinks it is.
2. how do you know if someone is middle class?
3. sometimes a swear word is the entirely appropriate word and not cringy at all.
4. you seem to be making some logical errors - that some posts are cringy - that they are cringy because of the language used - that the language used is half heartedly offensive - that Mumsnet is middle class - therefore middle class people who swear are cringy. Very poor reasoning skills.

Ah so there are rules to this malarkey. Can you provide the rules? Are your rules the official rules?

Thank fuck I'm not a sweary Mumsnet poster. 🤔

Agree & appreciate your comment.

I can't get worked up about harmless mumsnetisms like cockwomble and twatbadger. I quite like the creativity.

Fucking hell. I must be identify as Bloody Royalty.

You can cringe all you like - why would anyone care what you do?

(Whispers) You know the word portemanteau is actually portmanteau itself?

🎶 I’m middle class
And I’ll swear if I want to,
Swear if I want to,
Swear if I want to.
You would swear too
If you were middle class too 🎶

I reckon anyone who identifies as any class these days is cringe, certainly in the western world. There is poverty bracket; unemployed bracket; and low income bracket; middle income bracket; and high income bracket

It's very cringe but I've never thought of it as edgy (quite the reverse) or middle class or something that particularly women say.

I prefer shithousery.

Errm if you need to be told then that's a problem.
Think about the definition of lower or get a dictionary.

I do very much hear you on this, but I've always thought there is a difference between, "Shit, I dropped the pan" and, "You fucking piece of shit, I'm going to fucking kill you".

Obviously if it's a trigger, it's a trigger, but generalised swearing is not the same as swearing at someone.

Do you have a head injury? Maybe you should seek help. 🙄

Now fuck off and when you get there fuck off from there too.

What’s wrong with lower class?