Academics at the University of Sheffield are undertaking the first national census of regional swearwords in a bid to preserve localised insults that are at risk of disappearing due to the homogenisation of the English language.
The project, led by Dr Chris Montgomery, a senior lecturer in dialectology, aims to create a 'vivid, honest record' of contemporary speech. It was prompted by an approach from the art project Modern Toss, which wanted help to create a map of British swearwords.
Dr Montgomery said that while large corpus-based data allows tracking of general swearwords from the 1990s to the 2010s, very little is known about regional swearing. 'We haven't ever had a survey of regional swearing before, we sort of don't know what's going on,' he said. 'What we know is swearing is really quite productive, it's useful, it has got a good social function.'
Members of the public across the UK are invited to submit regional swearwords specific to their towns or cities. Examples already submitted include 'arl arse' from Liverpool, 'bampot' from Glasgow, and 'radgie bastard' from north-east England.
The data will be used to inspire exhibitions and potentially an interactive map where visitors can hear swearwords spoken in local accents. Dr Montgomery stressed the project is not about promoting offensive language but about preserving a record of how English is spoken in 2026, as regional dialects face decline.
Fellow linguist Dr Robbie Love of Aston University welcomed the initiative, noting that 'there's an awful lot of variation across society in the way that we use language that directly reflects and reinforces our identity, and of course, regional identity is a really important part of that.'
