An international guide to cursing

Curse + Berate in 69+ Languages isn’t just an indispensable travel companion. No, even in our happy global Internet village, there may come a time when you need to tell someone, in his or her own tongue (and from the safety of your own home), to go [expurgated] himself with an [expurgated expurgated]. Or at least there might come a time when you’ll sit around fantasizing about it.

During last month’s hacking debacle, I was particularly drawn to certain Russian phrases, including an after-dinner valediction that, in the interest of not seeing my site retransform into a Tramadol billboard, I won’t repeat here.

Still, it’s interesting to note that you only need a single Russian word — мулоэвон — to convey that someone “plays with his balls/bullocks and talks total and complete bullshit.”
 

Overall, I’m not sure which is more surprising — the variety of the curses, or how many seem to have counterparts in nearly every language.

Some of the more creative ones, in translation: ambulatory torn condom (Maltese, asshole); goldwash (Danish, blow job); speaks in farts (Hebrew, bullshitter); even rabbits attack a dead lion (Latin, chicken shit); you’ve got your ass open (German, crazy); the clown’s kiss (Spanish, menstruation); butt muscle cosmonaut (Dutch, gay); turd beetle (Uzbeck, miser); dead from sawing (Italian, wanker/copious masturbator).


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