Terrifying F-word that's not 'f*dge'

We hope you're not one of those dainty souls who choked on their tea upon hearing Don Don say 'fuck' on Tuesday. After Israel and Iran breached Tuesday's ceasefire announcement, the thoroughly un-Shashi Tharoor said, 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard, that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.' Usually covered by the pointless fig leaf of an asterisk, in circa 2025, the 'f-bomb' no longer detonates moral outrage, but registers as a firecracker. It's now the linguistic equivalent of an angry sigh: versatile, direct, and often more honest than a thousand euphemisms.

What we call 'polite' language was engineered in the drawing rooms of Victorian England, where repression was an art form and fainting couches were essential furniture. Swearing was seen as uncouth, something for the labouring classes, and words like 'fudge' covered their 'horrid cousin'. Today, if a teacher drops the f-word, it's not a scandal, it's solidarity with students. It doesn't signal moral decay, but shows that the utterer is not a self-righteous coy boy (or girl). The emotional frankness of 'fuck' is still taboo in certain quarters because mainstream media swoons and blanches whenever they see/hear it, quickly covering it up with the usual cover-ups like *, %, #, @, and BBC-invented bleeps. Fucking trite, if you ask us.