Crap is a swear word

[IncidentalAnarchist]

Yes, a trivial AIBU but help to settle the argument!

I believe that crap is a swear word, albeit on the mild end of swearing

My friend believes it is not.

AIBU to think she is wrong and that crap is a swear word?!

Clearly the problem is that nobody has defined the meaning of 'swear word'. If you don't establish what constitutes a 'swear word' then obviously it is impossible to come to any sensible conclusion about whether 'crap' is one.

It's clearly not the same as 'a rude word or phrase', because there are plenty of ways of saying something rude without using so-called swear words. If my dd called a woman in the street 'you stupid muppet', it's not swearing, but it might just as well be. I conclude that 'swearing' is a pointless and meaningless category of words.

In the US, it's not but I personally think it is a very mild one. I don't mind my teens saying it.

This thread has gone from crap to knackered. So my reason for knackered being inappropriate is that it also means slaughtering an ill or injured animal ie knackers yard.

Yeah I thought knackered meant worn out as in fit for the knackers yard.

My mother told me off for using 'god ' and 'knackered' in the 1970s
She also wouldn't let me listen to Supertramp's track 'right, you're bloody well right' - I was 16!

Ha! onemore

My mum was fuming when I played Relax at full volume on 12"

I was only about 10 and it had been a birthday present.

Crap is a brilliantly useful adjective when that you can use instead of the swear word you'd prefer!!!

It's good enough for the Vicar of Nibbleswick

Dog help us all, don't crap in the street...

Crap is a swear word, a taboo word for faeces.(Dictionary definition)
It is used in America to indicate rubbish, and is heard frequently in children's films, but not here.

Michael Parkinson said 'crap' on his chat show about forty years ago when he had a difference of opinion with Kenneth Williams. It might have raised the odd eyebrow but nobody's career suffered.

Oh well, if Michael Parkinson said it than it's fine

Swear word but mild end of the scale. Imo in same league as bugger or twat.

I think it is one of the few incidents where Americans are less uptight about using a taboo word that the British. More worryingly they do seem to use Spaz and retard more freely and they don't seem to be as beyond the pale as they are here.

Crap isn't a swear word at the (primary) school I teach in.

Fuck, shit and cunt are swear words.

Every other word is along the 'inappropriate for use in school' scale.

Crap - British English (rubbish) = slang
Crap - American English (ref toilet) = mild swearing

British English predates American English and therefore in the UK it is slang. The only reason some Brits don't like this word these days is therefore thanks to Thomas Crapper.

My mother considered knickers a dirty word.

A teacher colleague shouldn't have been surprised that an angry parent confronted her after her 9 year old had been told 'Your work is crap'.

Swearing has become more acceptable, unfortunately. Even seemingly well-to-do people swear openly in public as if its a badge of honour. Crap is an ugly word meaning shit. I would not use it in public, and very very rarely in private. People used to say "thats rubbish", but now they have to use swear words. I really hate this development.

You are definitely on the wrong forum Mhoys

I think it's a swear word. I remember xsil saying it at the dinner table in front of my parents. I was clutching my pearls.
Mind I remember having a teacher lose the plot at me when I muttered 'knickers' in school.

It is a swear word, but very mild. In the US it isn't.

When The Vicar of Nibbleswick was published it had to have a sticker on the front of it warning that it contained the word crap

I don't consider crap a swear word. I wouldn't use it in a professional situation, but then I wouldn't say 'fart' at work either - it's about on the same level for me. Not swearing. Bugger and twat are worse, in my opinion.

I don't swear a lot either but hate hypocrisy about it - I had parents who thought 'fucking' was a useful all-purpose adjective to be used every other sentence, but completely flipped out at me when I happened to say 'bloody hell' in their hearing as a teenager.

I classify crap as a swear word. I don't want to hear my primary age children saying it and would be unimpressed if I heard it in my class. Some of the children don't know that words like crap and knackered are unacceptable as they hear them all the time.

I classify it as a milder swear word and my 15yo sometimes uses it for effect (not in the earshot of her younger sister) and gets a raised eyebrow and she knows that there are only a few occasions where it's acceptable to hear her using it. She wouldn't dare use the f word though (in our earshot - I'm not daft to think she doesn't know and use it in front of her friends).

YABVU.