Strewth! Are Aussies the world’s most virulent swearers?

Dr Laugesen's new book - Australians are a nation of creative expletive users who take pride in bad language as part of their cultural identity.  'Suckhole', 'get rooted', 'no wuckers' and 'we're not here to f*** spiders' are some of the more modern colourful phrases identified as uniquely Australian obscenities by the Australian National Dictionary Centre's Chief Editor, Dr Amanda Laugesen. Her new book, Rooted, an Australian history of bad language charts the history of swearing and how it was used to defy authority as well as oppress and control groups in Australia's history. She said in our earlier history the four Bs - 'bloody', 'bastard', 'bugger' and 'bullshit' - were some of the rudest expletives one could utter and could earn you a flogging or a fine depending on which century they were used in. Bloody was noted as "the great Australian adjective" in 1847 by an English visitor to the Australian colonies. According to Dr Laugesen, by the 1900s Australians were talking about themselves as swearers. "In the middle of the 19th century there's a desire on the part of Australians to be respectable and shake off their convict past.