If you didn’t immediately think of the f-word I congratulate you. I did, my friends did – we probably all went straight for the profane.

And while I could have told you all about an amazing florist in West Hampstead (Achillea), I will save that for another blog and focus on why we are all so uncouth as to jump straight into effing and blinding.

Working with words you would think that I could come up with something that wouldn’t offend my mum’s sensibilities – and I could find something better than the f-bomb as a blog topic.

Why does this word pop out of all our mouths so easily? Why is it that when an adjective is required to express our fury – the f-bomb is dropped? When we are exasperated, delighted, hopeless or generally can’t be bothered to use our brains we express our assorted emotions with f**k.

According to science there are six ‘classic’ emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad – I personally find that quite limiting.

I can go from being incandescent with rage to dejected and downhearted in an instant. I’m currently in the happy stage – and as it’s Friday I might become ecstatic or even euphoric. But probably at some point an obscenity will pass my lips that could quite easily have been replaced with a perfectly polite word – had I bothered to stop and think.

So why do we choose to use f**k as adjective, adverb, verb, noun and all manner of other ways when we could try stretching our vocabulary and opt for the expressive rather than an expletive?

The most obvious is that it is a simple and effective way to tell someone to clear off. We say f**k off when with just a bit of imagination we could not only make a person leave, but also insult them – probably without them even realising it.

You could start by telling an offensive gentleman that he has a microphallus and threaten to, or that you are sorry that a kick up the arse would have little impact due to steatopygia (although if it’s Kim Kardashian she would probably thank you for remarking on her fat buttocks).

And if you aren’t just using the f-word as an insult then there are all manner of adjectives out there simply waiting for you to try them out.

Do we fear using a new word incorrectly or that some might think us blatherskites if we aim for words with more than one syllable? Or are we just not interested in moving on from a (possibly) 15^th century Germanic word that may or may not have been used to describe the act of copulation.

If like me you grew up with bad words being banned at home then you probably still enjoy the naughtiness of a strategically used four-letter word.

Maybe that’s why we do it?

Even now, I still squirm when someone curses on the TV and I’m watching with my mum and in spite of the fact I’m nearly 30, I try my utmost not to swear in her presence. This is of course out of respect, but also fear of the clip around the ear I would get if a cuss slips out.

At the very least we could all be a little bit more creative in our use of words – swearing or not there are some obscure, weird and wonderful words that will allow you to better express however many emotions you experience on a daily basis.

This from Moose Allain (@MooseAllain) shows some of the ‘Hidden Corners of English‘ that I’m going to try and add to my lexicon.

Even if it is just a word a week…it would be a start – because let’s be honest we all know that swearing isn’t really that big or clever.