What’s been less well explored is which sounds don’t wind up in curses—which ones soften the sound of a word so that it can’t pack the angry, cathartic power that common curse words do ...

In these languages, they didn’t find the harsh-sounding stop consonants that seem common in English swear words. “Instead, we found patterns that none of us expected,” Dr. Lev-Ari said.

And “the ick” factor isn’t unique to the English language. “For example, in Spanish, ‘húmedo’ (moist) [is one of the] most cringe-inducing words we have,” Ureña says.

Those words sound vaguely familiar — perhaps you think you've heard them before but aren't sure you could explicitly define them. That's because they're gibberish — part of an endless stream ...

A new study shows that swear words across languages may have more in common than previously thought. Many of them tend to leave out the same sounds.