Which Countries Swear the Most?

English is the lingua franca of much of the internet. For better or worse, this means that swearing has become a lot more natural for people whose first language isn’t English.

Business English and Movie English have been superseded by social media English, a language culture that encourages users to participate as they learn. Since language is an organic beast, the ruder end of this lexicon has evolved as internet users have given sometimes centuries-old cusses new meanings and associations. Swearing has become fun again, much like the mental workout of solving a Crossword or playing NYT Strands, and this time, everyone’s invited.

“It used to be that the only media you could consume was highly edited,” says Benjamin Bergen, author of What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. “With social media, all of a sudden now we have direct access to people’s informal language. If we have access to people’s informal communication and it includes more profanity, that just means we’re going to be exposed to more of it and that’s going to normalize it, and so people have become inured.”

But where in the world are people taking advantage of the chance to flex their cussing muscles? WordTips, a site focused on puzzes like Connections and Wordscapes analyzed a sample of 1.7 million English-language tweets and found the percentage of swear words used by X users from different countries.

Key Findings

• The U.S. ranks number one as the country that swears the most, with 41.6 tweets per 1,000 featuring curse words. 
• The UK comes in second place (with 28.6 posts including swear words per 1,000 analyzed), followed by other English-speaking countries such as Australia (26.6), New Zealand (25.2) and Canada (24.6).
• Maryland is the U.S. state that swears the most (66.3 tweets per 1,000), and South Dakota is the state that swears the least (21 out of 1,000 posts include curse words).
• Baltimore, MD, is the U.S. city that swears the most (78.2 tweets per 1,000), and Lexington, KY, is the city that swears the least (20.2 posts per 1,000).
• Newcastle (UK) is the European city where people swear the most (34.5 tweets per 1,000), followed closely by Leeds (UK), with 33.1 posts per 1,000 including swear words.

The Countries That Swear the Most

Americans swear the most in the world, and 41.6% more frequently than those in the UK, which is the second most sweary country. Some 41.6 tweets out of every 1,000 sent from the U.S. contain swear words, compared to 28.6 for the UK—which is, in turn, just a few decimal points ahead of Australia. The four least sweary countries are all in the Middle East, while the 12 least sweary countries are in Asia or Africa. Kuwaiti users swear the least of all: just 3.6 tweets per 1,000.

The five countries that swear the most when tweeting in English have English as their official or co-official language. We only counted English-language tweets, so this is not because English-language countries are simply tweeting in English more often.

Professor of linguistics Jean-Marc Dewaele suggests that those with English as a second language may be less likely to swear because the censorship, mystery and culture of swearing make it harder to learn. Outside of English-speaking countries, web users may either lack or doubt their understanding of how offensive a swear word is or when it is appropriate to use it.

The Cities in Every Continent That Swear the Most

Next, we identified the five sweariest cities on every continent. North America’s are all in the U.S., and they swear more than any of the top five on other continents. The sweariest city in the world is Baltimore, Maryland (78.2 tweets per 1,000).

Outside of North America, Cali in Colombia is the sweariest city (46.0 per 1,000). Cali is 2.3 times more sweary than the next sweariest South American city, Santiago in Chile (19.8 per 1,000). In Colombian Spanish, locals have had to innovate by strengthening “Hijueputa” (“son of a bitch”) to “Doble” and even “Triple hijueputa”—suggesting a need to branch out into English for a richer cursing vocabulary.

Four UK cities and an Irish one lead the swearing in Europe. Newcastle, in the northeast of England, is the sweariest of all, with 34.5 tweets per 1,000, followed by Leeds (33.1), Birmingham (31.0) and

Manchester (30.7). Dublin, in Ireland, is relatively decent, with a swear count of 23.5 per 1,000.

While the UK and America may have done more than any other country to spread the English language, their attitude toward swearing differs enormously. While the British tend to pepper their dialogue freely with curse words, swearing remains a more sensitive topic in the U.S., which may be why Americans let rip in the ‘no holds barred’ arena of Twitter.

The U.S. States that Swear the Most

America’s perimeter states are living on the edge. The nation’s West Coast states, Sun Belt and almost everywhere East of Minnesota swear considerably more than those in the middle. Maryland (66.3 tweets per 1,000), Louisiana (61.7) and Georgia (57.4) are the three sweariest states, each by a considerable margin over the next.

The average sweariness in Maryland and Louisiana is inflated by their sweariest cities, Baltimore and Baton Rouge (see below). This is less the case in Georgia, where we have previously attributed the state-wide potty-mouth to humidity and horseflies.

Midwesterners are known for being pretty gosh-darn friendly, with a long-established culture of community awareness and modesty. Five of the eight least sweary states are in the Midwest, with South Dakota setting the finest example (21.0 tweets per 1,000).

The Major U.S. Cities That Swear the Most

Baltimore, Maryland, is America’s sweariest major city, with locals swearing in 78.2 tweets per 1,000. This is 7.3% more often than second-placed Baton Rouge, Louisiana (72.9). Baltimoreans are set a good (or bad?) example by one of their own, The Wire writer David Simon, who is celebrated for his imaginative cussing on Twitter.

Lexington in Kentucky is America’s least sweary city, with 20.2 sweary tweets per 1,000. Despite common belief, there is no universal “cursing law” in Kentucky. However, a new law allows for students to be suspended or expelled if heard using profane language; this follows a law against insulting or taunting a law enforcement officer with “offensive or derisive words.” You might also be booked for harassment if making a “coarse utterance” at another person.

The City in Each U.S. State that Swears the Most

Finally, we mapped the most sweary city in every U.S. state. In New York, it’s Buffalo, with 48.8 curse tweets per 1,000. Buffalo has been grappling with freedom of speech laws lately after an area lawyer Tony Rupp was booked for shouting, “Turn your lights on, asshole!” to a motorist who turned out to be a cop. 

“The Supreme Court said long ago that what distinguishes us from totalitarian states is the ability to criticize police officers, often in colorful language, without having to fear that you’re going to wind up in cuffs,” says Adam Steinbaugh, a First Amendment lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

California has an average swear rate of 44.4 per 1,000 tweets. But this is eclipsed by California’s sweariest city, Jurupa Valley, whose rate is 77.6. This makes it second only to Baltimore across the country.

Chicago is Illinois’ worst offender, with 54.8 swear-laden tweets per 1,000. The city is famous for The Wieners Circle in Lincoln Park, a hot dog stand with a culture of consensual “name-calling and yelling.” During lockdown, the firm launched a Facetime service offering to insult you remotely in lieu of a good old-fashioned IRL slanging match.

Methodology

To find out which countries, cities and U.S. states swear the most in English, we found the percentage of geotagged English tweets (sample of 1.7 million tweets) from each location that contained any swear words.

The seed list of swear words came from a dataset of 1,600 English profanities and their variations from Surge AI. We manually removed some words that were more generic in nature when presented without context. We filtered the data to allow only one tweet per user so we wouldn't bias the results based on certain users.

This data analysis was completed at the end of May 2024.