"Fuck" or "Shit"? What's Your State's Favorite Curse Word?
If there’s one thing that unites Americans, it’s a love of swearing. However, this cuss-loving country is divided when it comes to expletive of choice. Some people are "fuck" people, while others are "shit" people, according to new maps showing a nationwide view (minus Hawaii and Alaska) of where people use common swear words most.
“Fuck,” for example, is big in coastal regions and major cities, but not so much in the nation’s interior. Another map reveals Midwesterners -- fitting the stereotype -- are too damn nice, using the term “darn" more than anybody else.
Jack Grieve, a Forensic Linguistics professor at Aston University in England, created the maps based on the relative frequencies of swear words in each county based on nearly a billion tweets collected from October 2013 to Nov 2014. You can read more about his methods here, and check out the maps below.
Shit
They say the West Coast is the Best Coast... it looks like much of the East Coast and the Gulf Coast is one big Shit Coast, on the other hand.
Bitch
Welp, we spoke too soon. The massive Shit Coast appears to be the Bitch Coast, too. Although, it looks like Chicagoans and folks in the San Francisco Bay Area also tend to drop the b-word. The rest of the country? Bitch, please.
Asshole
The Deep South doesn't have a thing for "asshole," and that's perfectly respectable. However, New England, the Upper Midwest, and much of the West Coast feel assholes are like opinions: everybody says them out loud.
Fuck
You'd think that "fuck" would be a more universal term, but apparently, the interior of the US just doesn't love the F-bomb the same way the coasts do. Though that doesn't really explain WTF is going on in the Dakotas.
Damn
Southerners say "damn" as much as they damn well please. And it looks like New Englanders are too busy saying "fuck" to give a damn.
Darn
The widespread use of a watered-down version of "damn" is baffling in 2015. Perhaps it's most often in the context of, "Looks like I'm still stuck in the Midwest. Darn."
Tony Merevick is Cities News Editor at Thrillist and is, admittedly, more of "fuck" person. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow him on Twitter @tonymerevick.