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submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Fun lists. They show some interesting patterns.

The Italian list has plenty words rated 0 or 1, because they require specific conditions to be vulgar. Things like:

  • one associated meaning is OK, another is vulgar - e.g. "sbocca" (lit. "unmouths") as "flows into" vs. "barfs", only the later is vulgar
  • they come in a pair, the components aren't vulgar by themselves - e.g. "porco" (pig) and "Dio" (God) are perfectly OK, but "porco Dio" (lit. pig-God) is foul
  • they're only offensive if they're a stand-by for another similar word - e.g. "zio" (uncle) for "Dio" in the expression above. That's because minced swears are extremely common in Italian.

The Portuguese lists are specially interesting to see side-by-side:

  • "fazer um bico" (lit. "to do a beak") gets rated 2 in the European list because it's basically blowjob, but it would be 0 in the Brazilian one, as it typically refers to that sort of odd job you do on the side.
  • "biscate" is the opposite - it gets 2 in the Brazilian list because it's a demeaning word towards women, but in the European list it would be simply "odd job".
  • "pila" would be probably 1 in the Brazilian list. Regionally it's a common way to count money (like "bucks" in "two bucks"), with a separated etymology.
  • "cu" (arse, arsehole) gets 1 in the European list because a lot of speakers use it to refer to the buttocks as a whole. In Brazil you do get this sometimes, but it's always vulgar, and most of the time people refer to the hole.
  • plenty words rated 1 refer to animals, or parts of: vaca (cow; also disagreeable woman), peru (turkey; also dick), corno (horn; also cuckold) etc.
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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