Latest news with #swearwords
CNN
18-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Juneteenth scale backs, how the world swears, a singer's protest: Catch up on the day's stories
👋 Welcome to 5 Things PM! Swear words can act as social glue, playing meaningful roles in how people connect and express themselves. How often they're used, though, varies depending on region and cultural differences. Here's what else you might have missed during your busy day. 1️⃣ At risk: Job Corps centers provide housing and schooling for low-income students aged 16 to 24. The six-decade old program has provided a lifeline for more than two million young Americans, but its fate is now uncertain after the Trump administration ordered its operations to be paused. 2️⃣ Scaling back: Despite Juneteenth's status as a federal holiday, celebrations across the US are being toned down or canceled. Event organizers cite safety issues and political backlash as reasons for the changes. 3️⃣ AI analysis: Outcries about artificial intelligence replacing human jobs have become more common. CNN's Allison Morrow writes that it's CEOs' new way to keep their workers afraid of losing their jobs. 4️⃣ Trash stash: Viral videos of garbage captured by explorers in China's Zhangjiajie Forest — with one explorer describing waste piled seven to eight floors high — have prompted a mass cleanup. From 2010 to 2015, the local government banned trash burning, so dumping in caves became common. 5️⃣ 'I'm standing by them': At the LA Dodgers game this past Saturday, Nezza performed the National Anthem in Spanish in protest of the ICE raids in the city. Before she sang, an unidentified employee told her to sing the song in English. Get '5 Things' in your inbox If your day doesn't start until you're up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the '5 Things' newsletter. 🏠 Home alone: The Goodsons have been living off the grid in an energy efficient home prefabricated in a factory. In a housing and construction labor crisis, these modern homes are a growing trend. Israel and Iran trade strikes as Trump weighs US involvement in conflict Supreme Court upholds Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth Fed holds interest rate steady for fourth time in a row 💵 That's how much money drug companies spent on TV ads in 2024 — but that may soon change as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. considers policies that would alter the ease and price of pushing products onscreen. 🏭 Smokestack impact: Human-caused climate change is not as new of an issue as previously thought. With the help of sophisticated computer models and scientific theory, researchers believe a clear signal can be detected as far back as 1885. 🏀 Caitlin Clark down: The larger-than-life basketball star suffered a poke in the eye following a testy game at the WNBA Commissioner's Cup final. Here's how it happened. 🥃 Liquid Death and WhistlePig partnered to create a new whiskey aged in what? A. SoilB. A water wellC. A casketD. An oak barrel⬇️ Scroll down for the answer. 🏃 It's a runderful life: Olympic gold medalist Karsten Warholm soared past his own world record time in the 300-meter hurdles last week in front of a home crowd in Oslo, Norway. Although shaving half a second may not sound like much, when the new world record is a mere 32.67 seconds, he's running with the stars. 👋 We'll see you tomorrow.🧠 Quiz answer: C. The new whiskey is partially aged in an actual casket at WhistlePig's Vermont distillery, and made with Liquid Death's mountain-sourced water.📧 Check out all of CNN's newsletters. 5 Things PM is edited and produced by CNN's Chris Good, Meghan Pryce, Kimberly Richardson and Daniel Wine.
CNN
18-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Juneteenth scale backs, how the world swears, a singer's protest: Catch up on the day's stories
👋 Welcome to 5 Things PM! Swear words can act as social glue, playing meaningful roles in how people connect and express themselves. How often they're used, though, varies depending on region and cultural differences. Here's what else you might have missed during your busy day. 1️⃣ At risk: Job Corps centers provide housing and schooling for low-income students aged 16 to 24. The six-decade old program has provided a lifeline for more than two million young Americans, but its fate is now uncertain after the Trump administration ordered its operations to be paused. 2️⃣ Scaling back: Despite Juneteenth's status as a federal holiday, celebrations across the US are being toned down or canceled. Event organizers cite safety issues and political backlash as reasons for the changes. 3️⃣ AI analysis: Outcries about artificial intelligence replacing human jobs have become more common. CNN's Allison Morrow writes that it's CEOs' new way to keep their workers afraid of losing their jobs. 4️⃣ Trash stash: Viral videos of garbage captured by explorers in China's Zhangjiajie Forest — with one explorer describing waste piled seven to eight floors high — have prompted a mass cleanup. From 2010 to 2015, the local government banned trash burning, so dumping in caves became common. 5️⃣ 'I'm standing by them': At the LA Dodgers game this past Saturday, Nezza performed the National Anthem in Spanish in protest of the ICE raids in the city. Before she sang, an unidentified employee told her to sing the song in English. Get '5 Things' in your inbox If your day doesn't start until you're up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the '5 Things' newsletter. 🏠 Home alone: The Goodsons have been living off the grid in an energy efficient home prefabricated in a factory. In a housing and construction labor crisis, these modern homes are a growing trend. Israel and Iran trade strikes as Trump weighs US involvement in conflict Supreme Court upholds Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth Fed holds interest rate steady for fourth time in a row 💵 That's how much money drug companies spent on TV ads in 2024 — but that may soon change as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. considers policies that would alter the ease and price of pushing products onscreen. 🏭 Smokestack impact: Human-caused climate change is not as new of an issue as previously thought. With the help of sophisticated computer models and scientific theory, researchers believe a clear signal can be detected as far back as 1885. 🏀 Caitlin Clark down: The larger-than-life basketball star suffered a poke in the eye following a testy game at the WNBA Commissioner's Cup final. Here's how it happened. 🥃 Liquid Death and WhistlePig partnered to create a new whiskey aged in what? A. SoilB. A water wellC. A casketD. An oak barrel⬇️ Scroll down for the answer. 🏃 It's a runderful life: Olympic gold medalist Karsten Warholm soared past his own world record time in the 300-meter hurdles last week in front of a home crowd in Oslo, Norway. Although shaving half a second may not sound like much, when the new world record is a mere 32.67 seconds, he's running with the stars. 👋 We'll see you tomorrow.🧠 Quiz answer: C. The new whiskey is partially aged in an actual casket at WhistlePig's Vermont distillery, and made with Liquid Death's mountain-sourced water.📧 Check out all of CNN's newsletters. 5 Things PM is edited and produced by CNN's Chris Good, Meghan Pryce, Kimberly Richardson and Daniel Wine.
CNN
15-06-2025
- General
- CNN
201 ways to say ‘f**k': what 1.7 billion words of online text shows about how the world swears
EDITOR'S NOTE: CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news analysis and commentary. The content is produced solely by The Conversation. This story contains graphic language that some readers may find offensive. Our brains swear for good reasons: to vent, cope, boost our grit and feel closer to those around us. Swear words can act as social glue and play meaningful roles in how people communicate, connect and express themselves – both in person, and online. In our new research published in Lingua, we analysed more than 1.7 billion words of online language across 20 English-speaking regions. We identified 597 different swear word forms – from standard words, to creative spellings like '4rseholes', to acronyms like 'wtf'. The findings challenge a familiar stereotype. Australians – often thought of as prolific swearers – are actually outdone by Americans and Brits, both in how often they swear, and in how many users swear online. Our study focused on publicly available web data (such as news articles, organisational websites, government or institutional publications, and blogs – but excluding social media and private messaging). We found vulgar words made up 0.036% of all words in the dataset from the United States, followed by 0.025% in the British data and 0.022% in the Australian data. Although vulgar language is relatively rare in terms of overall word frequency, it was used by a significant number of individuals. Between 12% and 13.3% of Americans, around 10% of Brits, and 9.4% of Australians used at least one vulgar word in their data. Overall, the most frequent vulgar word was 'fuck' – with all its variants, it amounted to a stunning 201 different forms. We focused on online language that didn't include social media, because large-scale comparisons need robust, purpose-built datasets. In our case, we used the Global Web-Based English (GloWbE) corpus, which was specifically designed to compare how English is used across different regions online. So how much were our findings influenced by the online data we used? Telling results come from research happening at the same time as ours. One study analysed the use of 'fuck' in social networks on X, examining how network size and strength influence swearing in the UK, US and Australia. It used data from 5,660 networks with more than 435,000 users and 7.8 billion words and found what we did. Americans use 'fuck' most frequently, while Australians use it the least, but with the most creative spelling variations (some comfort for anyone feeling let down by our online swearing stats). Americans hold relatively conservative attitudes toward public morality, and their high swearing rates are surprising. The cultural contradiction may reflect the country's strong individualistic culture. Americans often value personal expression – especially in private or anonymous settings like the internet. Meanwhile, public displays of swearing are often frowned upon in the US. This is partly due to the lingering influence of religious norms, which frame swearing – particularly religious-based profanity – as a violation of moral decency. Significantly, the only religious-based swear word in our dataset, 'damn', was used most frequently by Americans. Research suggests swearing is more acceptable in Australian public discourse. Certainly, Australia's public airing of swear words often takes visitors by surprise. The long-running road safety slogan 'If you drink, then drive, you're a bloody idiot' is striking – such language is rare in official messaging elsewhere. Australians may be comfortable swearing in person, but our findings indicate they dial it back online – surprising for a nation so fond of its vernacular. In terms of preferences for specific forms of vulgarity, Americans showed a strong preference for variations of 'ass(hole)', the Irish favored 'feck', the British preferred 'cunt', and Pakistanis leaned toward 'butt(hole)'. The only statistically significant aversion we found was among Americans, who tended to avoid the word 'bloody' (folk wisdom claims the word is blasphemous). People from countries where English is the dominant language – such as the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland – tend to swear more frequently and with more lexical variety than people in regions where English is less dominant like India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Ghana or the Philippines. This pattern holds for both frequency and creativity in swearing. But Singapore ranked fourth in terms of frequency of swearing in our study, just behind Australia and ahead of New Zealand, Ireland and Canada. English in Singapore is increasingly seen not as a second language, but as a native language, and as a tool for identity, belonging and creativity. Young Singaporeans use social swearing to push back against authority, especially given the government's strict rules on public language. One possible reason we saw less swearing among non-native English speakers is that it is rarely taught. Despite its frequency and social utility, swearing – alongside humour and informal speech – is often left out of language education. Cultural, social and technological shifts are reshaping linguistic norms, blurring the already blurry lines between informal and formal, private and public language. Just consider the Aussie contributions to the July Oxford English Dictionary updates: expressions like 'to strain the potatoes' (to urinate), 'no wuckers' and 'no wucking furries' (from 'no fucking worries'). Swearing and vulgarity aren't just crass or abusive. While they can be used harmfully, research consistently shows they serve important communicative functions – colourful language builds rapport, expresses humour and emotion, signals solidarity and eases tension. It's clear that swearing isn't just a bad habit that can be easily kicked, like nail-biting or smoking indoors. Besides, history shows that telling people not to swear is one of the best ways to keep swearing alive and well. Martin Schweinberger is a lecturer in applied linguistics at The University of Queensland. Kate Burridge is professor of linguistics at Monash University. Republished under a Creative Commons license from The Conversation.
