It’s a fantastic word, really. It can be used for joy, fury, or disbelief. It’s a noun, a verb, and can be turned into an adjective. “F–k” is one versatile syllable, and Americans f–king love it. A new study reveals who uses it the most and who has the most fun doing it.
The study, from the University of Eastern Finland, looked at how people fling around the f-word on X/Twitter and crowned the United States the most foul-mouthed of three major English-speaking countries, with Britain in second place and Australia in third. The analysis, published in the journal Lingua, sifted through 7.8 billion words from 435,345 users between 2006 and 2023.
The team didn’t exactly see that coming. In the paper, they wrote that “the low frequency of f–k in the Australian data is surprising, as Australians are often perceived as prolific swearers.” So your mental image of a laid-back Aussie dropping f-bombs at the pub should actually be the guy in the Cleveland Buffalo Wild Wings. Online, at least, Americans are the ones hitting the profanity pedal hardest.
If Australia lost on volume, it won on style. The team found 2,160 spelling variants of the f-word in Australian posts, compared with 1,969 in the US and 1,474 in the UK. Think “fuqqen,” “fark,” “f–knicolor,” and the very Irish “feck” tucked into memes, rants, and jokes. Americans and Brits relied more on the plain, four-letter original.
The researchers didn’t only count curses. They mapped who we swear with. By reconstructing social networks, they found people were more likely to drop f-bombs with acquaintances than their closest friends, and the word was rare in tiny circles of fewer than 15 people. Lead author Mikko Laitinen called swearing “a natural part of human language,” adding that studying it is “fundamental linguistic research at its best.”
Other datasets sketch a similar portrait of a country that loves a good curse. WordTips analyzed 1.7 million geotagged tweets and found “f–k” is America’s most common swear word, with about 11.6 uses per 1,000 posts. Their 2024 map of sweary states ranked Maryland and Georgia near the top, while New York landed in a hilariously tame 17th place, far below its reputation.
Researchers also note that profanity can help people blow off steam, regulate emotions, and even cope with pain, which makes sense. “That was f–king fantastic” lands harder than “that was really good.” The Finnish team’s point is pretty simple. One word, three personalities. Americans go for quantity, Australians go for flair, and the rest of the Anglosphere sits somewhere in the middle.
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