An imperfect collection (2022)

This started as a silly idea to investigate similarities between languages while hanging out with friends. The biggest shortcoming of it is that the simple notation does not do the complex and nuanced relationships between words justice. Luckily, the Wikimedia Foundation saw the table below and started their own, much more sophisticated swear word catalogue called Wiktionary. In fact, Wiktionary has a wealth of these words available with clear definitions, and translations to dozens of other languages not listed here. If you’re as curious about swear words as I was as a teenager, go browse Wiktionary! And if a word is missing, why not find some reliable sources and add it?
I’ve taken the liberty of linking the words below to their respective Wiktionary articles, hoping to educate. In the process, I’ve changed some words to their standard form, e.g. separated by a space or not. The list itself has remained the same, no words have been added, moved, or deleted.

swear.php - A list with translations of bad words in many languages. (ca. 2012)

For language codes, see the list of ISO 639-2 codes on Wikipedia.

These translations are meant to be direct / literal! If not literal, translations will be marked as following:

• () = not used as swearword and/or sounds really weird
• [] = not literal, but used in translation
• {} = not used with literal meaning / in literal context

A list by orangensaft.

A big thank you to these contributors: