WEB CHUTNEY

You’ve probably been told at some point or the other that you shouldn’t curse, or that people who use swear words do so because they’re not intelligent enough to think of a better comeback. Guess what? They are wrong!

The study, entitled Taboo word fluency and knowledge of slurs and general pejoratives: deconstructing the poverty-of-vocabulary myth,published in the Language Sciences Publication, aimed to dispel the myth that people who swear are lazy with language.

The research was conducted by psychologists Kristin and Timothy Jay. They asked the participants to name as many curse words as they could within a certain time limit, all starting with a certain letter. Then they asked the participants to do the same with animals, and finally with general words. The people who knew the most swear words were also better at listing other words.

The research suggests that foul-mouthed people are more likely to have richer vocabularies than those who don’t curse and, therefore, are smarter.

Happy swearing, guys!