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The following is a list of words and formulations commonly used as profanity throughout Romania.
The word pulă can be translated into English as dick, cock, or prick and is a vulgar way of referring to the penis. It is most commonly used in expressions such as "în pula mea", which literally translates as in my cock, but has a meaning nearer to the English fuck in that it expresses anger or dissatisfaction. Both "pizda" and "pula" can also act as a filler swear word, similar to the English "fucking" or "fuck off".
When said in the indicative mood, as opposed to most profanity in Romanian, which is often in the conjunctive or conditional-optative moods, this expression normally conveys the intention of abandoning a certain course of action or the intention to complete a task with a minimum of effort: "mi-am băgat pula" - literally "I put my dick in", meaning "I did it superficially" (similar to "mi-am băgat picioarele" - "I put my feet in")!
" Pizdă " is most often employed as a swear word in Romanian. Roughly translating as "pussy" or "cunt", it is a vulgar word for the vulva. A common profanity is the phrase "du-te-n pizda mă-tii", meaning "go into your mother's cunt". Another one is "futu-ți pizda mă-tii", "fuck your mother's cunt". These are often shortened to "pizda mă-tii". If the speaker doesn't wish to direct the profanity at their interlocutor, the phrase "pizda mă-sii" is used instead, meaning "his/her/their/its mother's cunt".
Pizdă can also be used as a derogatory term for calling someone a coward. It is commonly used in "Nu fi pizdă" which translates to "don't be a pussy".
One of the variants of this particular insult which is often heard is "morții mă-tii", meaning "your mother's dead [people/relatives]", which can also employed in the third person ("morții mă-sii"). A more "traditional" euphemism for this expression is "paștele mă-tii" ("your mother's Easter"), mainly employed because of its phonetic similarity to pizdă. Another variation on the "mother" theme is "futu-ți dumnezeii mă-tii" which means "fuck your mother's gods".
Shortening this phrase even further yields "mă-ta" (your mother) or "mă-sa" (his/her/its mother). This euphemism is less insulting than the above phrases and often finds its way into informal conversations.
A fute literally means "to fuck" and is used in a variety of expletives. Să te fut translates as "fuck you", but the verb is more commonly used in expressions such as "futu-ți pizda mă-tii" ("fuck your mother's pussy") or just "futu-i" ("fuck it").
Related to a fute are the phrases "a i-o trage cuiva" ("to fuck someone"), "a da la buci" ("to fuck in the ass") and "futai" ("sexual intercourse").
Romanian insults often involve the sexual behavior of men or women.
Women are usually insulted by comparison to prostitutes. There is a rich vocabulary of insults involving prostitution in Romanian. Curvă is an insult meaning whore or prostitute, or, more generally, a sexually promiscuous woman. Synonyms or near-synonyms are târfă, traseistă, or pizdă. The words zdreanță, boarfă and ștoarfă, coardă are all used to refer to a woman of low moral fiber. A pimp is usually referred to as a pește , which literally translated to "fish".
Profanities directed at men include poponar , curist and găozar , all with the same meaning of faggot. Literally, these words refer to male homosexuals, although they are generally used as insulting words towards any male, no matter their sexual orientation. The words are derived from popou, cur and găoază, which translate to "butt", "ass"/"arse" and "asshole", respectively. All three refer to the anus, implying the person they are directed at practices anal sex.
A womanizer is known as a fustangiu (from fustă, skirt), or pizdar , a word formed in a similar fashion to poponar but which has recently taken on a more positive connotation similar to "player" (Bravo, tată, mare pizdar!).
Bulangiu has quite a complex and contradictory formation. Bulan is slang for "luck" and also for "thigh", bul is also Romani slang for "ass". However, the word bulangiu is used to describe a man who is either not cooperative, a backstabber, or ungrateful, and has roughly the same meaning the English ass has in the phrase "don't be an ass!" (Nu fi bulangiu!). The female version of bulangiu may be bulangioaică or bulangie, but feminine forms are rare.
Lăbar and labagiu refer to a male person practicing masturbation. It carries the same meaning as "moron" or "jerk" in American English, or "wanker" in British English. These words are derived from labă, literally "paw", but referring to masturbation in slang. The expression "a face laba" means "to jerk off". Although they are literally connected to masturbation, in the spoken language they have the same meaning as "jerk", "asshole" or "ass" when referring to an individual.
Muist and its female equivalent, muistă, both mean "blowjob (giver)" often in reference to a whore. These words derive from the interjection muie!, loosely translating to "suck my penis", or, generally, as "up yours!", which is itself derived from Roma slang, muj ([muj]) meaning "mouth" in Romani.
Comparison with animals is another common way of insulting people in Romanian. Scroafă, a word meaning "sow", is often used in the same sense as the English bitch. Men can be insulted with the term bou meaning "castrated bull". Other animals that can be used for insulting people include: goose (gâscă, usually used for women, with the sense "stupid"), donkey (măgar, told to a "stubborn" or "selfish" person, or carrying the same meaning as "asshole!" in English, someone who intentionally hurts the people around him), and pig (porc, for a "careless", "selfish" person, similar to English "motherfucker").
Nenorocit , originally an old popular word that literally translates as "unlucky" and described a disadvantaged or unhappy person (similar to the English phrase "poor devil"), is now used in a powerfully pejorative sense with a meaning similar to "motherfucker" in English. It is used mostly in the vocative case: nenorocitule (male), nenorocito (female).
Death is also a recurring element of most forms of profanity in Romanian. A phrase used when expressing disbelief or sarcasm is "Să mori tu!", or, alternatively, "să moară mă-ta", meaning "should you/your mother die [if what you say is not true]". In the first person, să mor eu ("I should die ..."), it is used to uphold a previous statement.
Long tirades of various forms of profanity strung together into a syntactically correct sentence is also not unheard of, and the Romanian language certainly allows the formation of such structures. An example of this phenomenon is the phrase (Futu-ți) paștele și dumnezeii/Dumnezeul mă-tii astăzi și mâine de nenorocit ("(fuck) your mother's Easter and [her] God/gods today and tomorrow, you asshole"), which can, in theory, be further elaborated. E.g. - Futu-ți Cristoșii mă-tii de căcat rânit cu lopata, meaning (fuck) your mother's Christ, you shit taken off with a shovel.
Other insults are the ones with devils, "Du-te dracu" meaning "go to devil" (similar to "go to hell). Another is "fir-i-al dracu" meaning "be of the devil", also "fir-ar* dracului" being an expression similar to "darn it". Or "te ia mama dracu" meaning "Devil's mother will take you", being a warning to not do something.
The word păsărică (little bird) is a euphemism for pizdă. It is frequently used when addressing children to refer to the vagina. The word puță is a euphemism for pulă. It is often used in conversation with children to refer to the penis.
The word fleașcă translates roughly to soaking wet and may describe something being ruined through soaking or similar means, or "soft/no erect", and it may refer in slang to pussy, with the implication that it is wet or aroused, or to a soft man which does not stand for his rights, with allusion to his "erection". Fofo or fofoloancă, with the approximate meaning "hairy" or "furry", from Romanian "înfofolit", dressed, wrapped (in thick clothes, as in winter), is also another, softer slang word used to refer to vulva or vagina.
Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, involves the use of notionally offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion, as a grammatical intensifier or emphasis, or to express informality or conversational intimacy. In many formal or polite social situations, it is considered impolite, and in some religious groups it is considered a sin. Profanity includes slurs, but most profanities are not slurs, and there are many insults that do not use swear words.
"Cunt" is a vulgar word for the vulva in its primary sense, but it is used in a variety of ways, including as a term of disparagement. "Cunt" is often used as a disparaging and obscene term for a woman in the United States, an unpleasant or objectionable person in the United Kingdom and Ireland, or a contemptible man in Australia and New Zealand. In Australia and New Zealand, it can also be a neutral or positive term when used with a positive qualifier. The term has various derivative senses, including adjective and verb uses.
The term four-letter word serves as a euphemism for words that are often considered profane or offensive.
Quebec French profanities, known as sacres, are words and expressions related to Catholicism and its liturgy that are used as strong profanities in Quebec French and in Acadian French. Sacres are considered stronger in Québec than the foul expressions common to other varieties of French, which centre on sex and excrement.
Mat is the term for vulgar, obscene, or profane language in Russian and some other Slavic language communities.
The Spanish language employs a wide range of swear words that vary between Spanish speaking nations and in regions and subcultures of each nation. Idiomatic expressions, particularly profanity, are not always directly translatable into other languages, and so most of the English translations offered in this article are very rough and most likely do not reflect the full meaning of the expression they intend to translate.[c]
Profanity in Finnish is used in the form of intensifiers, adjectives, adverbs and particles, and is based on varying taboos, with religious vulgarity being very prominent. It often uses aggressive mood which involves omission of the negative verb ei while implying its meaning with a swear word.
Profanity in Mandarin Chinese most commonly involves sexual references and scorn of the object's ancestors, especially their mother. Other Mandarin insults accuse people of not being human. Compared to English, scatological and blasphemous references are less often used. In this article, unless otherwise noted, the traditional character will follow its simplified form if it is different.
Latin obscenity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. Words deemed obscene were described as obsc(a)ena, or improba. Documented obscenities occurred rarely in classical Latin literature, limited to certain types of writing such as epigrams, but they are commonly used in the graffiti written on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Among the documents of interest in this area is a letter written by Cicero in 45 BC to a friend called Paetus, in which he alludes to a number of obscene words without actually naming them.
The Korean language has a number of words that are considered profanity.
Italian profanity are profanities that are blasphemous or inflammatory in the Italian language.
The five most common Cantonese profanities, vulgar words in the Cantonese language are diu (屌/𨳒), gau (㞗/𨳊/鳩), lan (𡳞/𨶙/撚), tsat (杘/𨳍/柒) and hai (㞓/屄/閪), where the first ("diu") literally means fuck, "hai" is a word for female genitalia and "gau" refers to male genitalia. They are sometimes collectively known as the "outstanding five in Cantonese" (廣東話一門五傑). These five words are generally offensive and give rise to a variety of euphemisms and minced oaths. Similar to the seven dirty words in the United States, these five words are forbidden to say and are bleep-censored on Hong Kong broadcast television. Other curse phrases, such as puk gai (仆街/踣街) and ham gaa caan (冚家鏟/咸家鏟), are also common.
Sexual slang is a set of linguistic terms and phrases used to refer to sexual organs, processes, and activities; they are generally considered colloquial rather than formal or medical, and some may be seen as impolite or improper.
Hokkien is one of the largest Chinese language groups worldwide. Profanity in Hokkien most commonly involves sexual references and scorn of the object's ancestors, especially their mother. The mentioning of sexual organs is frequently used in Hokkien profanity.
Profanity in the Norwegian language is referred to in Norwegian as banneord or simply upassende språk. Many words are characterized by dialect. The offensiveness and strength of a word may be very different between regions.
Swedish profanity can be divided into several categories. A substantial number of curse words in Swedish have religious origins. Euphemistic variants of the religious curses are commonly used as well. References to genitalia or bodily functions are common in the Swedish profanity vocabulary. Notably, no word for sexual intercourse is commonly used in invectives, unlike many other languages. However, calques of English fuck using knull (noun), knulla (verb) do occur; this comes across as more offensive than fuck does in English. In general, knull(a), along with genitalia slang words like kuk ('cock') and fitta ('cunt') are the most offensive single words. By contrast, most of the traditional religious profanities are not considered very offensive today; this is in line with Sweden's long-standing secularism.
Chinese Internet slang refers to various kinds of Internet slang used by people on the Chinese Internet. It is often coined in response to events, the influence of the mass media and foreign culture, and the desires of users to simplify and update the Chinese language. Slang that first appears on the Internet is often adopted to become current in everyday life. It includes content relating to all aspects of social life, mass media, economic, and political topics and the like. Internet slang is arguably the fastest-changing aspect of the language, created by a number of different influences—technology, mass media and foreign culture amongst others.
Tagalog profanity can refer to a wide range of offensive, blasphemous, and taboo words or expressions in the Tagalog language of the Philippines. Due to Filipino culture, expressions which may sound benign when translated back to English can cause great offense; while some expressions English speakers might take great offense to can sound benign to a Tagalog speaker. Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, is the standard register of Tagalog, so as such the terms Filipino profanity and Filipino swear words are sometimes also employed.
Georgian profanity refers to inflammatory vulgar, obscene or profane language in Georgian that some of the words and phrases even evolved into a modern Georgian slang. For exact and comprehensive pronunciation of words and phrases, especially ones written with the apostrophes, the rules of Romanization of Georgian and IPA are essential.
The Polish language, like most others, contains swear words and profanity. Although some words are not always seen as pejorative, others are considered by some to be highly offensive. There is debate amongst scholars regarding the language's swear words that are considered to be the most derogatory.
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