US ranks first in swearing

Congratulations, United States. The nation may lag behind in healthcare, education, and life expectancy, but Americans still reign supreme in at least one way—swearing like a bunch of drunken sailors.

Linguists in Australia recently analyzed the Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE), a massive database containing over 1.9 billion words from 1.8 million web pages across 340,000 websites in 20 English-speaking countries. In doing so, they hoped to better understand how people employ naughty words in their written communications. The team focused in particular on a selection of 597 vulgarities, including misspellings and variants on the same concept or phrase. According to the authors, the project marked the first large-scale analysis of its kind.

“Rather than being a simple, easily definable phenomenon, vulgarity proves to be a complex and multifaceted linguistic phenomenon,” Schweinberger and Monash University co-author Kate Burridge wrote in the journal Lingua.

“… As [Charles] Darwin observed, humans have a deep-seated craving for novelty and expressiveness, and they are constantly reimagining and adapting the aesthetics of their expressions,” they added. “Vulgar language is the natural playground for unleashing this linguistic creativity.”

Schweinberger and Burridge get into the linguistic weeds for their study, but broadly speaking, their results speak for themselves: the US sets the bar for dirtiest mouths.

“Some may find it disappointing, but the research found the United States and Great Britain ranked ahead of Australia in terms of using vulgar language online,” Schweinberger said in an accompanying statement. 

Not far behind Australia was Singapore followed by New Zealand, Malaysia, and Ireland. While the study focused mainly on each nation’s overall dirty word tallies, Schweinberger offered a potential theory on why the stereotypically foul-mouthed Aussies ranked surprisingly low.

“One possible explanation is that Australians are more conservative when they write online but not so much when they are face-to-face,” he said. “Australians really see vulgarity, swearing and slang as part of our culture—we’re very invested in it.”

The results go beyond bragging rights—they speak to how language is developed, adopted, and evolved by both native and adopted English speakers.

“Being able to understand when it’s appropriate to use humor, informal expressions, or even mild vulgarity can make a big difference in feeling included, building relationships, and navigating everyday life in a new culture,” said Schweinberger. “It’s not just about speaking correctly—it’s about speaking appropriately.”

Damn right.

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