Use
A very strong way to express anger or frustration is to use the words tabarnac, sacrament, and câlice. Depending on the context and the tone of the phrases, it might make everybody quiet, but some people use those words to add rhythm or emphasis to sentences.
Usually, more than one of these words is used in an expression. The words are simply connected with de (of), without any restrictions. Long strings of invective can be connected in this way, and the resulting expression doesn't have to have any concrete meaning; for example, Mon ostie de saint-sacrament de câlice de crisse! (literally: my host of (the) holy sacrament of (the) chalice of Christ). Non-religious terms may also be strung together in this way, as in mon crisse de char est brisé, tabarnac de câlisse (literally: my Christ of (a) car is broken, tabernacle of (the) Chalice). In areas where English is also commonly spoken, English expletives are often inserted. "fuck ostie" (fuck (the) host) is common around the Outaouais and Ottawa-Gatineau area.
The word fucké (with meanings varying from "crazy, disturbed" to "broken down"; cf. English screwed up) is much milder than "fuck" is in English, and is routinely used in, for instance, TV sitcom dialogue. The same goes for chit ("shit") (which in Quebec French is used only as an interjection expressing dismay, never as the noun for excrement). When used as a verb, "va chier" (literally: go shit), it does not mean to excrete but rather to "fuck off". When used as past tense chié, it is used exactly as fucké : mes souliers sont chiés ("my shoes are fucked"). Even English-language dialogue containing these words can appear on Quebec French-language television without bleeping: for example, when, in 2003, punks rioted in Montreal because a concert by the band The Exploited had been cancelled, TV news reporters solemnly read out a few lyrics and song titles from their album Fuck the System. However, the same is not true of Quebec's English-language television stations, which follow the same guidelines as other stations in Canada.
Read more about this topic: Quebec French Profanity
Famous quotes containing the word use:
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)