The extremely NSFW swearing maps of America

Pretty much everyone swears - it's good for you - but what words you use to swear depends on where you live.

Jack Grieve, a lecturer in forensic linguistics at the University of Aston has created a detailed set of maps of the US showing regional patterns of swearing preferences.

This post contains lots of naughty words and NSFW language, obviously.

The data was gathered using a corpus 8.9 billion words of geo-coded tweets from 7 million users. The red-blue scale shows relative frequency based on the total number of words from that county divided by population.

For instance, 'Cr*p' is particularly popular inland whereas 'f*ck' and 'f*ckboy' are more popular on the coast. 'F*ckboy' was also the fastest growing word in terms of frequency of usage. 

The arguably 'milder' swear words, such as 'h*ll', 'd*mn', 'p*ssy', 'g*sh' and 'b*tch' are popular in the south and southeast - areas known for their 'hospitality'.

Fitting the stereotype, 'd*rn' is most common in Kansas.

'D**che' is particularly popular in the northern states.

'B*st*rd' is commonly used Maine and the North east.

'A**h*le', 'c*nt', and 'sh*t' are also most popular in the east coast and north east.

'M****rf**ker' is most commonly used in the South.

'F****t' is most commonly used on the West Coast whereas 'wh*re' is barely used in the West and 'sl*t' is most common in Nevada and Utah.

You can read the entire paper including information on how Grieve gathered his data here.

HT Strong Language

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