Gosh Dang It / Real Life

• Sometimes people who work around children try to temper other people's language. In the 1970s, one school district in the US dealt with a demand that the book Making It With Mademoiselle be removed from the shelves of the high-school library. A thorough investigation of opening the book revealed that it was a volume of sewing patterns from the editors of Mademoiselle, a fashion magazine.
• English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers of adult learners are often split on the topic of just how clean your speech needs to be in class. On the one hand, teachers should be professional and this includes appropriate language. On the other, part of teaching your students about usage includes vulgarity (so they at least know just how bad other people's language is). Most teachers settle for keeping their own vocabulary G-rated but not censoring students.
  • Making matters worse, textbooks written for ESL teachers in training are largely silent on the topic. One assumes that lessons on correct usage of vulgarity and profanity are not condoned, though.
  • It's also hard to get the right range of what is acceptable in different situations in a foreign language.
• In the UK "sod" and "bugger" are mildly obscene (not that most people across the pond know this) but permissible pre-Watershed — about as bad as "hell" or "damn". (Not realizing that "bugger" is a swearword in the UK is not this trope, but something else entirely.)^note In fact, to "bugger" someone is to commit "buggery", that is, either sodomy or bestiality. "Sod" is derived from "sodomite", and dressing it up as "Son Of Devil" is another layer of the trope in action. Part of the Values Dissonance over "bugger" is a case of convergent evolution: in the southern US "bugger" evolved as a Gosh Dang It To Heck for calling someone a "booger"- the two sound nearly identical in a Southern accent.
  • In English (or the United States at least), 'fucking' is increasingly being replaced with 'freaking' and/or 'flipping'.
• Foreign languages have their own equivalents of this trope. In particular, oaths that refer to religious imagery were often "sanitized" into nonsense.
  • In German, "Gottes Blitz" (God's Lightning) became "Potz Blitz". Otherwise, it is averted in general German media. Religious swearing is much less of a deal than in English-speaking countries, and can be uttered in elementary schools without consequences. Even "Scheisse", the German word for "shit", while not very sophisticated, is never censored, and is used in media regularly; even on KIKA (the public children's TV channel).
  • The Dutch "godverdomme" ("God damn it/me," same root as "goddamn") often becomes "potverdomme" —or simply "verdomme" (which still means "damn" and is a Dutch equivalent of the "shit" expletive). More clean-mouthed Dutch change it further into "potverdorie" or "verdorie". As a word, it's meaningless, but sounds close to the original.
  • The word "shit" in the Netherlands is a much milder word there than in English speaking countries and can be seen as the equivalent of "damn".
  • A lot of old French swearwords tend to use bleu (blue) instead of Dieu (God). "Sacré Dieu" (Holy God) became "sacrebleu."^note Still mildly "blasphemous", as blue is the color of the Virgin Mary. Similarly, "Par Dieu" ("By God") became "Parbleu". There are also "Mort Dieu" ("God's death") becoming "Morbleu", "Nom de Dieu" ("In God's name") becoming "Nom de bleu", "Vertu Dieu" ("God's virtue") becoming "Vertubleu", and so on.
  • The (rather old-fashioned) French swearword "jarnicoton" comes from one of the French King Henri IV's Bishop advisers, Coton, asking the reportedly foul-mouthed King to use his own name instead of God when swearing - so instead of saying "Ja r'nie Dieu" (accented version of "Je renie Dieu", "I deny God"), it became "Ja r'nie Coton" ("I deny Coton").
  • In Belgian French, "Nom de Dieu" (for God's sake) often becomes "nomdedjeu," "nomdidju", and other variants. Gaston Lagaffe's Prunelle is notorious for it("Rogntudjuuuuuuu!!!"). "Nom d'un chien" ("name of a dog") is another old-fashioned form.
  • The Russian
    • "Blyad"(technically "Whore", but used more like "Fuck") becomes "Blin" (Pancake) in front of sensitive ears.
    • "Khuy" ("cock") becomes "Khren" ("horseradish", which is rather apropos. Have you ever seen a horseradish? Now you have◊). "Yebat'" ("fuck") becomes "Yeteet'" or "Yedreet'" (nonsensical erratives, the latter probably derived from the word for "tough, healthy" or "kernel").
    • "Yobana mat'" / "Yob tvoyu mat" ("fucked (your) mother") becomes "Yo moyo" (Oh, me), "yedryona vosh" ("strong, healthy louse"), "yokarny babai" ("freaking boogeyman"), "yoperni teatr" ("yo-pera theater"), and "YOPRST" (letters in sequence).
    • Russian has quite a lot of inventive obscene cursing, and most of it has at least one "heck" form, sometimes many and often quite picturesque. In a nutshell, any word, I mean any, starting with "yo" (including loanwords and mispronounced "ya" words), can be a euphemism for "yobana mat'". But religious curses are never "hecked", they are considered very mild by themselves.
  • Québecois is ripe with this.
    • Crisse de tabarnac de calisse! This is considered very obscene, for a more "Gosh Darn It To Heck" name, try "Crime de tabeurslak de caline!" It doesn't mean anything but it's still used. There's also "cinq six boîtes de tomates vertes" for "sainte ciboire de tabarnak".
    • A rather hilarious one is "château de marde", which translates into "shit castle". I shit you not.
  • All Québecois swearing comes off as this or even Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head to French speakers, once they learn the words are deformed versions of church items (Christ, tabernacle, chalice etc.) and given how most French insults are scatological or sexual. A Canadian comedian made two versions of a song listing French and Québecois insults, the former is much more vulgar than the latter.
  • The Polish swearword of choice is very often "kurwa" (meaning "whore", but contextually the same as "shit" or "fuck" in English), and is vulgar enough to be censored on TV. Poles wanting to avoid offending delicate sensibilities often use "kurczę" which means "chicken".
  • In Argentina, the euphemism Me cache en dié was once commonly used as a euphemism for Me cago en Dios ("I shit on God"). The euphemistic form even made it to a tango's lyrics.
  • The Spanish-speaking countries have a more contrived example of this: in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, albeit not universally, they have no problems with using the Spanish equivalents of damn (¡maldición!, ¡rayos!, etc), or hell (¡Diablos!), since they're considered at worst childish insults, despite those countries have a mostly conservative Catholic population, while more stronger profanities are censored in TV transmissions, albeit this is starting to change. On the other hand, Spaniard media, both originally-made and dubbed, have no problems with using even stronger profanities normally censored in Latin America, due to historical reasons since the death of Francisco Franco, who previously banned the use of profanity in Spaniard media during his rule. In the same way, invoking the name of God is not considered a bad thing there either.
    • In Spain "Me cago en la mar" (I shit in the sea) has "Me cachis en la mar". In some areas that is shortened to "cachi la mar". In Spain, many cuss words have similar euphemisms, though "joder" (fuck) probably is the word with the most substitutions: "joer", "jope", "jolín", "jolines", and more.
    • Also, "Te Jodiste", as in, "You're fucked", has been shortened to "Tejo" — which is the first person present tense of knitting (equivalent to "I knit") and (in some places) a sport similar to Bocce Ball.
    • In Mexico many people tend to finish any phrase with Chihuahua, the name of a Mexican state, when not intending to use the real word: chingar, which is used as "fuck". Many Latin American dubs or subs used to replace every swear word with a family-friendly slur. This can range from saying "damn" to ludicrous painfully outdated words that sound weird even to 50-something adults.
  • Italian has "cavolo" ("cabbage") and "cacchio" (sprout of some kind of plants) as an euphemistic form of "cazzo" ("cock"—no, not a rooster—but more like "fuck", as in "what the fuck" or as an interjection).
  • The Finnish curse "perkele" (euphemism for Satan, originally the name of a pagan thunder god) often gets corrupted mid-sentence into "perjantai" ("Friday") if the speaker realizes there are sensitive ears present. This was parodied in the Finnish amateur film Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, where the main character Pirk uses "Oh, Thursday!" as a curse.
  • Similarly in French, "Merde!" ("Shit!") will occasionally change to "Mercredi!" ("Wednesday!") mid-word and "putain!" (lit. "whore", meaning "fuck") to "purée" ("mash!") or "punaise!" ("drawing pin!")
    • In Spanish, as well, it's not uncommon to swap the word for "shit" with the word for "Wednesday" ("Mierda" and "Miércoles", respectively); be it mid-word or deliberately from the start.
  • In Arabic subtitles/dub for any foreign movie, any Cluster F-Bomb gets invariably swapped with the generic "Tabban" ("Curse!"), which is a cause of great amusement for many Arabic-speakers (anyone with a middle-school education in the Arab world speaks either English or French, and often both). Oddly enough there are many insults with thinly-veiled sexual overtones which get spared by Rule of Funny, in local productions.
  • In most cases, Japanese swears ARE this trope already. Words often translated as "bastard/son of a bitch, etc" ("temee, omae, konoyaro, koitsu", etc.) literally just mean "you/him/her/that guy", etc. but with aggressive/hostile implications. Sometimes a "dirty mouth" in Japanese is defined by HOW something is said, not WHAT is said, (compare "nani o yatte ru no?" to "nani yattenn da?" Both lit. "what are you doing", but the latter implies an intent closer to "... the fuck you doin'?") These words and turns of phrase occupy the same position in the Japanese vernacular as harsh swear-words in English, but due to the lack of sexual and religious expletives, they lack the taboos cursing does in the West, and hearing them in manga and anime aimed at kids is pretty common. This creates a dilemma for translators, as these expletives are used very liberally in a media where their rough English equivalent would not be considered appropriate. Some words, such as "kuso" (lit. "shit, crap") do directly translate, but are not treated with the level of taboo seen in the West.
• Many Utahn members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints use rather odd substitutions for curse words. It's justified by their use of the pamphlet For the Strength of Youth. All LDS youth are given this to read and follow as a guideline, specifically admonishes readers against using swearwords, among other things.
  • Examples include: "Oh my heck!", "Oh my gosh" or "holy heck". Stranger ones include "Biscuits", "Fridge it", and "Snap".
  • They also commonly abbreviate the state of eternal punishment to "What the H?" (This is given a captioned "footnote" in the parody "The Work and the Story".)
  • Ironically a customer service survey found Utah ranked the fifth highest in using swear words during calls with customer service lines. Get somebody riled up enough and the goshes, flips and darns are easily dropped for a Cluster F-Bomb strike (as aptly demonstrated in the opening of The Killers' "In The Car Outside.")
  • The apostle Jay Golden Kimball (1853-1938) was a hilarious hard subversion of the trope; often giving profanity and humor laced talks in church meetings. Latter Day Saint culture still often irreverently remembers Kimball as the "Swearing Apostle" even decades later. Kimball chalked up his colorful language as having been learned while working as a mule driver at the age of 15.
• Survivor contestant Neleh Dennis was known for saying "oh my heck" all the time, clever editing made it look like a Verbal Tic, which we can't really be sure it's not.
• When asked for his opinion of Ted Bundy, Charles Manson called him a "poopbutt".
• Preacher Tony Campolo was somewhat famous in religious circles for pointedly averting this trope:
  "I have three things to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases caused by malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. [dramatic pause] What's worse is that you're more upset about the fact that I said 'shit' than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."
• In a similar vein to Campolo, Eliseo Soriano of Ang Dating Daan fame has no qualms about cussing during his "Bible expositions", although the local television ratings board in the Philippines do beg to differ.
• In the United States Air Force Basic Military Training program, the instructors aren't allowed to use profanity. So they develop a weird alternate vocabulary that lets them get the same ideas across without actually swearing. It's fairly common to hear an instructor screaming "WHAT THE PISS, CLOWN?! IS THAT HOW WE DO IT NOW IN THE AIR FORCE?!!"
• Joe Biden will often retort claims by saying "With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey". He said this most notably during the 2012 vice-presidential debate towards Republican opponent Paul Ryan. But Biden is also responsible for the most famous aversion of this trope by an American politician in recent memory, where he called the signing of the Affordable Care Act "a big fucking deal."
  • On a similar note for critics against Joe Biden, the use of "Let's Go Brandon" became exactly that as an alternative to "Fuck Joe Biden" after an NBC interview from Kelli Stavast tried to keep her interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown PG when the crowd was shouting Fuck Joe Biden throughout that particular interview after an October 2021 race at the Talladega Superspeedway. As for the main man's own response to it once he finally heard someone say that phrase to him, he pretty much played along with it by saying he agrees with the sentiment and didn't really care too much about it.
• On the commentary for the Justice League episode, "Legends, Part 2", director Butch Lukic invokes this on himself as the crew was talking about Orion's voice actor, Ron Perlman, to which, he refer to Perlman's role as Hellboy, then backtracks and says "Heckboy". A similar case happened when a local movie theater in the Bible Belt also labeled Hellboy (2019) as "Heckboy".
• Most video game Let's Players tend to curse a lot and make jokes utilizing said curse words to garner laughs, views and subscribers. However, there are a growing number of Let's Players who prefer to keep their videos family-friendly and try hard not to curse and the rare times they do, they usually bleep it out, chocobo wark it out, or just omit it in favor of silence. Some examples would be Chuggaaconroy, Roahm Mythril, Markiplier, JoshJepson, DeceasedCrab, and Retro Challenge Gamer.
• Financial adviser and radio personality Dave Ramsey seems especially fond of "dad gum".
• The Unix/Linux command "fsck" has become a substitute for the F-word, particularly in the geek community. Somewhat justified, since having to use the "fsck" command can indicate serious hardware issues.
• One origin story for the chimichanga (a deep-fried burrito popular in Tex-Mex cuisine) has the owner of a Mexican restaurant accidentally dropping a burrito into a deep fryer and preventing herself from saying "chingada" (Spanish for "fucked") because there were children nearby.
• In the National Football League, where trash talking and cursing are commonplace on the field, there's quarterback Philip Rivers, who due to a very religious upbringing, never swears. This led to clips of him trash-talking with phrases like "Dag gum" and the like.
  • Kirk Cousins has also developed this reputation. Unlike Rivers, he doesn't have an absolute conviction against swearing per se (and he has, in fact, been known to drop a very occasional Precision F-Strike), but most of the time his speech is limited to a lot of "frick" and "golly".
• This is enforced at NASA, as all communications are recorded and transcribed for public record. The first astronauts used very colorful language to describe the wonders and frustrations of spaceflight, which scandalized moral guardians. So, management had astronauts drilled to watch their language. This is why Jim Lovell yelled out: "I don't need to hear the obvious, I've got the frapping eight ball right in front of me!" rather than anything more obscene while struggling to get his craft under control.

---