Thanks primarily to a stand-up routine by Jeff Miller, I've been using "Oedipus" a lot lately.

Most people just stare at me strangely, but the ones who get it all seem to appreciate it.

This brings up an odd question. Since a lot of swear words and phrases seem pretty random here. Could you take somebody who doesn't know your language or culture and convince them that any seven words pulled out of thin air were the swear words of your culture? Could you have them convinced phrases mean different things than what they really mean?

It doesn't even take someone who doesn't know your language. We had my friend's mom absolutely convinced we were talking about something dirty when we used the word "platypus". It didn't mean anything other than we were placing it in sentences in place of the normal noun, but she eventually got pretty frantic over it.

Hi-larious.

And then I passed her a platypus and we were ok again.

My favorite as a kid was "Dratted dragons!"

As a "rebellious" young teenager I would say "Oh, dash it without the DA"

Now, I tend to use "Rats!", "Phooey!" or "Bother!" (from Winnie the Pooh) Another enjoyable one that is surprisingly cathartic (and I'm surprised has not come up yet in this geek community) is "Ish kakwi ai DURUGNUL!" Gimli says this at the Lothlorien elves in the Extended Ed. of Fellowship.

Quothe NightOwl: "This brings up an odd question. Since a lot of swear words and phrases seem pretty random here. Could you take somebody who doesn't know your language or culture and convince them that any seven words pulled out of thin air were the swear words of your culture? Could you have them convinced phrases mean different things than what they really mean?"

.

Yes. It is possible. In high school there was a foreign exchange student from Brazil that was on our American football team. He was a great guy but was EXTREMELY gullible. We had him convinced that spam (the canned, spiced meat) was a bad word. We tried others but since he had heard most of them before he didn't buy them.

On a side note we also had him convinced that we got so much snow here in Idaho that the roads were almost like tunnels and the snow piled higher than the telephone poles. He was super excited to see that, having never seen snow in person before. He was pretty disappointed when he found out the truth. We did get about 3 feet of snow in one storm that year but only ended up with 5 feet or so in most areas.

I have an amusing story in relation to teaching someone who doesn't know any better that certain words are swear words. It can also work in reverse.
While not exactly a cuss, my boyfriend's best friend's brother taught his daughter that "You're dead to me" meant "I love you." They found it hilarious until she started school and one day the teacher calls to question why she keeps using the phrase "You're dead to me." Woops. Lol.
Ah, the malleability of youth.

Heard someone say "H-E-double hockey sticks" yesterday at the grocery.

Semi risque, but I heard "Cork sucker" today.