Italian blasphemy and German ingenuity: how swear words differ around the world

Once dismissed as a sign of low intelligence, researchers now argue the power' of taboo words has been overlooked

When researchers asked people around the world to list every taboo word they could think of, the differences that emerged were revealing. The length of each list, for example, varied widely.

While native English speakers in the UK and Spanish speakers in Spain rattled off an average of 16 words, Germans more than tripled this with an average of 53 words ranging from intelligenzallergiker, a person allergic to intelligence, to hodenkobold, or testicle goblin", someone who is being annoying.