Which Swear Words Are Most Popular In Pennsylvania?

It took a British linguist to map out and document something many of us probably already know – there aren’t many swear words people in the Philadelphia area won’t use.

Jack Grieve, a professor of forensic linguistics at Aston University in the UK, working with researchers from the University of South Carolina, has collected nearly a billion tweets dating from October 2013 to November 2014, with the purpose of mapping out how Americans speak in different regions of the country, including which swear words are popular in various parts of the country.

As it turns out, people in Southeast Pennsylvania enjoy using nearly every swear word in the book.

Obviously, this is not safe for work, so click at your own discretion. There’s a map available for the word “darn” – the only one we’re able to share here – but that word’s popularity appears to be exclusive to the seemingly more polite interior of the U.S.

Visit Grieve’s website to see some of the swear maps of the U.S., and note how many seem to be highly popular around Southeast Pennsylvania. Red areas on the maps show high relative usage of swear words, and blue areas show less.