The word can have swearing but not genderisation which might be offensive (mother) nor allusions to sexual dominance (motherfucker). Nor, other possibly offensive connotations. It seems that the word is commonplace and people won’t stop using it, so an alternative to the word may be useful. But the problem with alternatives, is that people might not use them unless they carry a meaning that’s attention grabbing in some way, and when it comes to this word it needs to be able to be used in either a serious (non-funny) or comedic way.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Upvoting because this is a a true “no stupid questions” post.

    So… I think you need to look into the social and cognitive nature of swear words. Vsauce has a pretty good primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7dQh8u4Hc

    I think you also need to let go of the desire to be better than common culture, and/or the desire to engineer a better culture from an external perspective. People are gross and messy, imprecise and reckless. It’s what makes us interesting, motherfucker.