Women now swear more than men, and fucking what?

Weirdly we also use the word ‘abso-bloody-lutely’ loads, says new research


What a fucking turn up for the books – a new survey has revealed that our swearing habits have changed and women now use more ‘bad language’ than men.

Specifically, we use the word fuck in our daily lives more than men, and are 10 times more likely to say shit. The study also found that women’s swearing has gone up 500 per cent since the 1990s.

The survey, which was conducted by Lancaster University and the Cambridge University Press, questioned 376 volunteers who submitted recordings of up to three hours of their daily conversations, or up to 10 million words. Lead researcher Tony McEenry said the rise in profanity from women is down to the rise of equality between the sexes.

He said: “As equality drives on, the idea that there is male and female language, that there are things which men and women should or should not say, is going to be eroded. Gentlemanly behaviour and ladylike language is becoming something of the past.”

While homophobic and racist language has practically disappeared in the past two decades, we have now developed a new range of swear words like “fuckwit”, “fucktard”, and “abso-bloody-lutely”.

As swearing has become more acceptable women have caught up with men. Data from the 90s showed that men said fuck 1,000 times per million words, whereas their female counterparts used it just 167 times. McEnery said: “It looks like there were a set of men who said it a lot in the Nineties, and they influenced the women to do it, and then it leveled down.”