Colorado is the Shiznit posted a great diary yesterday, "In which I swear a lot." Now, this was a serious diary about a serious topic - evangelizing by US troops in Afghanistan (something which, in addition to being totally stupid, is in direct violation of Army General Orders). But her diary, and especially that title, invited a fair amount of cussing and swearing comments in return.
One of those comments was mine, where I suggested that the usual curse words in English are not only vulgar, but lack imagination. And I offered some examples from other cultures and languages. This led some Kossaks to offer their own examples.
So in the finest community spirit, I was moved to start a whole diary devoted to subject of . . . curses!
One rule (which will not be enforced, except perhaps by a pained, long-suffering, sigh): No swear words, please. No "fuck," "shit," etc., unless it's in context of something bigger. Be creative.
(You can mention the origin if you want, but that's not necessary.)
I'll start off with the ones I posted in the original comment, plus a few more:
"May the fleas of a thousand camels settle in his crotch." (Arabic curse)
"He should grow like an onion, with his feet in the air and his head in the ground." (Yiddish curse)
"May the semen of a diseased swineherd run down his mother's - who is a sheep's - leg." (Sort of Arabic, but I made some of it up.)
"Go drink from the sea." (Arabic equivalent of "Go jump in the lake" - Arabs love to exaggerate.)
"May he lose every tooth in his head but one, and with that one have a toothache for the rest of his life." (Some Middle Eastern country.)
And some from Insultmonger:
"Had they put your brain inside a bird, it would have started flying backwards." (Modern Hebrew)
"Go play doctor and nurse with the neighbor's dog." (Modern Hebrew)
" He should have a hundred houses, and every house should have a hundred rooms, and every room should twenty beds, and every night he should have a fever that drives him from bed to bed." (The best Yiddish curses start off sounding like some kind of blessing, then turns that blessing into misfortune.)
"He should marry the daughter of the Angel of Death."
"He should have Pharoah's plagues sprinkled with Job's scabies." (Yiddish curses often refer to Biblical events.)
"May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat." (Irish)
"Someone shat in his head and forgot to stir it." (German. Doesn't break rule one, since it's in context.)
And one last one, to sum it all up:
"Aroysgevorfene yoren" (Yiddish, meaning "wasted years." I put this in the original, because the English translation just lacks the pathos, the anguish, the heartrendering flavor that these words have when uttered by a Jewish mother on practically any occasion. Think about the years of the Bush administration and you will have a dim sense of how this phrase should be used.)
Dammit!