# All Slavic languages: Noa words



## Lingvisten

I'm sorry if there should be some profanity in this thread, but that is the matter of interest. I'm curious to find out, if there excists other examples like those I am about to write. There is a normal tendency in all languages to "disguise" bad words, with a similar, so called, noa word. These can be constucted in many ways. One common way is through alliteration.

   Хуй -> хрен
   Бляд -> блин

Do you know any other example in Russian where this is the case?



> Profanities are perfectly allowed as a topic of discussion but please always accompany them by one, two or three :warn: symbols according to their potential explosiveness.


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## Oletta

Lingvisten said:


> One common way is through alliteration.


 You must have meant "euphemisms" , "alliteration" is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or within words.


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## Lingvisten

Of course this is an euphemism, but it is made through alliteration:

   Хуй -> хрен
   Бляд -> блин

Both the euphemism and the original word begins with the same consonant. The rest of the euphemisms have nothing in common with the original words. I mean what I wrote, I just didn't explain it very well 



> Profanities are perfectly allowed as a topic of discussion but please always accompany them by one, two or three :warn: symbols according to their potential explosiveness.


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## Oletta

Oh, now I know what you mean... in Polish, for instance we say "kurcze", "kurde" or "kurna" instead of    "kurwa"*** (sorry if I offended anyone), the English sometimes say "sugar" instead of  "shit"... I dunno any Russian, I'm afraid...


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## papillon

The ones you've listed are indeed quite popular.
I'll add:
   хуй - хрен, хер

Additionally, for a plethora of expression starting with the verb form    *ёб* (derived from the verb fuck), such as ёб твою мать, the innocent ёлки-палки (~pines-and-sticks) can be used. The key feature of both is the strong ё (yo) at the beginning. You can start with this sound, pause for a little bit and then decide which way to proceed.


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## Jana337

I don't feel like editing every single post, so everyone please bear the following in mind. 

Profanities are perfectly allowed as a topic of discussion but please always accompany them by one, two or three  symbols according to their potential explosiveness.


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## slavian1

In Polish we have such words. 

 jebaæ (to fuck - very offensive word) - jechaæ (to ride)
 pizda (pussy - very offensieve word) - piczka (very soft equivalent, no other meaning)
 pierdoliæ (to fuck) - pieprzyæ (to use pepper to prepare a dish)

and so on, and so on...


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## tkekte

Oletta, how did you forget! Zaje... fajny.


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## dudasd

The part of Serbia where I live is rather famous by its "bad" words and phrases... so at the moment I can find only one good example of substitution through the means of alliteration:

Idi u peršun! (Literally: "Go to parsley!") instead of
Idi u  pičku materinu! ("Go to your mother's cunt!")

But it's usually used only when children are present.

Another way of avoiding "bad" words can be rhyming. I'm giving an old proverb as an example:

Nije isto misliti i srati. (To think and to shit are not the same thing.)
It's often replaced by:
Nije isto misliti i cveće brati. (To think and to pick up flowers are not the same thing.)

One more way is to give a "personal" name or a "descriptive" noun to some body parts. Examples:

For penis there is a rather long list of names (but we write them all in small letters when they mean a "bad" word). To avoid a ton of , I am giving some of the really existing male names that are commonly used for that purpose: Miško, Milojko, Stojko, Đoka, Đorđe. One of the favourite "descriptive nouns" is _vršnjak_ ("coeval"). 

For the female private part there is a less smaller amount of names, I think (Mica is the only one I can remember at the moment), but I'd say there are more common nouns that can replace the "bad" word: _mučenica_ ("martyr"), _ronđa_ ("rag"), _jaga _("little lamb") etc.

But actually, we are not doing a much of replacing, I must admit.


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## tkekte

Curious fact: in Bulgarian they also have the word piczka, but it means not just the body part but the entire human attached to it.  (пичка = chick) and there's also picz = dude.


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## tkekte

Another curious fact, before the Communist revolution, "Хер" (Chier) was the name of the letter Х in the alphabet, so it was used as an euphemism for "хуй" (chuj), but after people forgot the original letter names (they were replaced with monosyllabic "ay bee cee" style ones), the word "хер" became a swearword on its own. 

In Hebrew we have a better situation. The word "Zain" is the name of the letter "z", but it also means "the ch- word". Now, if we were to make an euphemism for it using the first letter, then the first letter of zain is still "Zain".

But I never heard anyone using euphemisms for the "bad words" in Hebrew. People aren't ashamed of having a potty mouth here. -_- It even goes on TV and radio.


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## slavian1

> For penis there is a rather long list of names (but we write them all in small letters when they mean a "bad" word). To avoid a ton of , I am giving some of the really existing male names that are commonly used for that purpose: Miško, Milojko, Stojko, Đoka, Đorđe. One of the favourite "descriptive nouns" is _vršnjak_ ("coeval").


 
The usage of names is a very interesting manner of expressing vulgar words in an euphemistic way. In Polish such words are also used, but only two of them come to my mind. They are : Wacek/ Wacuś and George (English counterpart of Polish Grzegorz - why in English? I don't know) as a description of the penis.

I cannot recall any female names for the vagina. Strage, ha?


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## Piotr_WRF

slavian1 said:


> pierdoliæ (to fuck) - pieprzyæ (to use pepper to prepare a dish)



Just my 2 cents, but I don't think anyone would use _pieprzyć_ nowadays in it's original meaning. Today it's just the same as _pierdolić_.


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## Athaulf

tkekte said:


> Curious fact: in Bulgarian they also have the word piczka, but it means not just the body part but the entire human attached to it.  (пичка = chick)



To what extent is this word (_пичка_) considered as vulgar and disparaging in Bulgarian? Because in Serbia and other ex-Yugoslav countries, it's more or less a synonym for _pizda_, and equally vulgar. (It can be used as a synecdoche for an attractive woman, but for obvious reasons, such usage is extremely profane and disparaging.)


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## tkekte

As far as I know, it's just teenage slang, and not rude at all. It's about the same as "chick" and "dude" in English, but with the implied meaning of "coolness". (In English a chick or a dude can be "lame". In Bulgarian, if you call someone a picz or piczka, you're already praising them.)

In Macedonian though, пичка apparently means the same thing as in Serbian. But I won't put the quotes that made me decide that here. 

So hmm, съвет за българските пичове: не казвайте "пичка" на македонските девойки.  (ако драга ви е главата ви)

There is another Bulgarian word, мацка, it means pretty much the same as _laska_ ("babe") in Polish. Does it exist in Serbian/Croatian?

I know that in Czech and Slovak _laska_ simply means "love" , and in Russian it means "affection" (no dirty connotations). So perhaps the Polish word wasn't offensive at all originally.


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## tkekte

Now that I think about it, laska isn't a match to ласка, because in Polish that's a soft l, and in Russian it's a hard l. Apparently there is also łaska which means "grace/mercy/compassion", and łaska boska = God's Grace. In Russian that's божья милость [božja milost'], and to add to the confusion, miłość means love in Polish.  (But grace/compassion in Russian, and mercy/blessing in Czech)

Now I wonder where does *l*aska come from.


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## Athaulf

tkekte said:


> As far as I know, it's just teenage slang, and not rude at all. It's about the same as "chick" and "dude" in English, but with the implied meaning of "coolness". (In English a chick or a dude can be "lame". In Bulgarian, if you call someone a picz or piczka, you're already praising them.)



So a typical girl in Bulgaria actually won't get offended if she hears someone calling her a _пичка_?  



> So hmm, съвет за българските пичове: не казвайте "пичка" на македонските девойки.  (ако драга ви е главата ви)



Don't mention that word in a woman's company anywhere west/northwest from Bulgaria, period. 



> There is another Bulgarian word, мацка, it means pretty much the same as _laska_ ("babe") in Polish. Does it exist in Serbian/Croatian?


We have the word _mačka_/_мачка_, which means _cat_, and it can also be used as a slang term for an attractive woman. However, this is pretty antiquated slang term, which isn't used that much by younger generations nowadays.


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## dudasd

What is the situation with the word _riba _(fish) in other languages? When I was a child, that was a "bad" or "half-bad" word, and it meant only "vagina" (for little girls it's used in diminutive even nowadays in that meaning), but lately - OK, let's say 20 years ago  - it got the meaning "chick", though it's not an offensive word anymore like in the  "pička" case. Actually, it's a compliment if someone says "Dobra riba!" (Though I don't advise its use in presence of older people.)


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## natasha2000

Athaulf said:


> To what extent is this word (_пичка_) considered as vulgar and disparaging in Bulgarian? Because in Serbia and other ex-Yugoslav countries, it's more or less a synonym for _pizda_, and equally vulgar. (It can be used as a synecdoche for an attractive woman, but for obvious reasons, such usage is extremely profane and disparaging.)



Hm... Both words can be used to describe a character of a person, and it usually means coward or a person who betrays his friends for his own sake... Maybe PIZDA is more coward and worse than PIČKA, I don't know, I think this depends on the person who pronounces it....


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## Athaulf

natasha2000 said:


> Hm... Both words can be used to describe a character of a person, and it usually means coward or a person who betrays his friends for his own sake... Maybe PIZDA is more coward and worse than PIČKA, I don't know, I think this depends on the person who pronounces it....



I would say that while both words are highly vulgar, _pizda_ is somewhat worse, kind of like _c*nt_ versus _p*ssy_ in English. When applied to a person, they have very different meanings. _Pička_ is a highly vulgar way to say "hot babe" when applied to a woman, and it means "wimp" or "coward" when applied to a man. _Pizda_ means a person of despicable character (treacherous, callous, cheapskate, backstabbing...) when applied to anyone. In fact, calling a man _pička_ versus _pizda_ is more or less equivalent to calling him _p*ssy_ versus _c*nt_ in English.

That's at least how me and my friends normally use these words...


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## natasha2000

Athaulf said:


> I would say that while both words are highly vulgar, _pizda_ is somewhat worse, kind of like _c*nt_ versus _p*ssy_ in English. When applied to a person, they have very different meanings. _Pička_ is a highly vulgar way to say "hot babe" when applied to a woman, and it means "wimp" or "coward" when applied to a man. _Pizda_ means a person of despicable character (treacherous, callous, cheapskate, backstabbing...) when applied to anyone. In fact, calling a man _pička_ versus _pizda_ is more or less equivalent to calling him _p*ssy_ versus _c*nt_ in English.
> 
> That's at least how me and my friends normally use these words...



Very well described. That is exactly what I wanted to say, but Athaulf did it much better.


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## ryba

slavian1 said:


> The usage of names is a very interesting manner of expressing vulgar words in an euphemistic way. In Polish such words are also used, but only two of them come to my mind. They are : Wacek/ Wacuś and George (English counterpart of Polish Grzegorz - why in English? I don't know) as a description of the penis.



English _George _stands for Polish _Jerzy_.
_Grzegorz_ is _Gregory_ in English.

I have no idea why people call it _Dżord__ż_ but I have a theory on it. First of all, I'm sure it is much less common than _Wacek/Wacu__ś_. Everyone understands "_wacek_" although, obviously, not everyone uses the word.

When I was in hi-school, I once saw a drawing on a desk, a drawing of a male genital parts and there was a _"Dżord__ż Dablju Busz" _written below. Had I not seen it then, I would not know what you're talking about. _Bush_ may be translated into Polish using the word _krzak_ (shrub) or _busz _(dense vegetation consisting of stunted trees or bushes).

Apart from that, in English, colloquially, _bush_ also means "crotch hair, hair growing in the pubic area". I think this could be an explanation. The best known Bush here in Poland is George W. and the second most famous is George, hehe. 

It is just a word play though, I'm positive it doesn't have any kind of ideological background in 99.9% of the cases.


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## ryba

Lingvisten said:


> These can be constucted in many ways.


Yeah, the only example of a disguised word that comes to my mind right now is _cztery litery_. Literally it means "four letters" but everyone knows it refers to _dupa_, meaning "ass".

Oh, in fact there is another euphemism for _dupa_, this time constructed by alliteration: _pupa _(="bum, buttocks", colloquial and inoffensive, quite a funny word, often used for calling a child's bum).


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## Encolpius

Oletta said:


> Oh, now I know what you mean... in Polish, for instance we say "kurcze", "kurde" or "kurna" instead of    "kurwa"*** (sorry if I offended anyone), the English sometimes say "sugar" instead of  "shit"... I dunno any Russian, I'm afraid...



I've heard "*kur*ňa" in *Czech*, too, instead of the *kur*va...
Do *pr*dele! [prdel arse ] <> Do *Pr*čic! [Prčice name of town]


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## sesperxes

dudasd said:


> The part of Serbia where I live is rather famous by its "bad" words and phrases... so at the moment I can find only one good example of substitution through the means of alliteration:
> 
> 
> Derpe instead of peder would be another alliteration?


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## Duya

Sort of. See this thread:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2375779


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