I find that they are like a medicine, that if I use them for every ache pain or sniffle, they don't work as well when I truly need them. When I use an expletive I want people to understand I have exited my normal range of emotional intensity.

"Fucking" is the only English "infix" that I know of, where it can be inserted inside of words like "abso-fucking-lutely". The only other is "freaking", which is a just euphemism for the former.

Edit: American English, I should say. The Brits have "bloody".

The linguistic “process” that allows this is called “expletive infixation” and it, as you might guess from the name, only works with swears.

There’s some neat work on where within the original word you can add them, made all the funnier by hearing people dispassionately dropping strings of f-bombs “to see what works”.

Here’s a classic paper on it: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

> only works with swears

It also works with "diddly" which isn't.

It's intersting what information can be found out there in this world, even about something as diddly.

https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/wendell.kimper/...

There's a song that goes, "Wouldn't it be loverly sittin' abso-bloomin'-lutely still?" Still just a euphemism, but an example that can be used with children who lack self-control with their language.

IME 'fucking' is used very often in words, considerably more than 'bloody' - in British Fucking English.

I say back-asswords instead of ass backwards.

I've most commonly heard it said, "bass-ackward," in order to remove the "ass" as a standalone syllable...

Profanity is a part of speech and it has two forms:

Lazy profanity, which also has low value, is the form where the majority of the value of the expression is carried by profane words.

The not-lazy form, which has considerably higher value, is the form where profanity augments the primary value contained in the non profane elements of the expression.

In my view, the not-lazy form is to be respected and preserved. Using the lazy form is most generally a disservice to the speaker, though not always. Context remains king!

I once attended an experiment where soldiers were trialling a new CIS system. An officer asked how it was going. A soldier replied “the fucking thing is fucking fucked, sir”. It was a succinct statement aimed at a senior decision maker and the trial was halted ten minutes later.

I disagree, but I do think that if swear words weren’t verboten, you wouldn’t think that.