Swearing

When the policeman served the summons on me, it was at Auckland airport, I was on my way to fly to Wellington and he hit me with these blue papers and I said 'Is this why you joined the force?' He said 'I've been chasing you for the last three miles, are you Germaine Greer?', and I said 'Yes', and he said 'Here you go', and I said 'What are these for?', and well 'two bullshits and a f***k' is virtually what he said, and I said 'It must be great being a policeman and doing such important work'...

– Australian author and academic Germaine Greer on her New Zealand 'scandal'

...I'm absolutely buggered.

– Famous post-match 'slip' by All Black Peter Jones in 1956

One of the Ten Commandments is not to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain and I think that that refers to...that means that we should not use God's name in a very offensive way. But I think that people naturally sometimes will say 'oh God, oh my God' when they're shocked or deeply upset and I wouldn't see that as taking God's name in vain.

– Bishop Pat Dunn

My mother was aghast. When I got back to New Zealand she said 'Edmund you didn't say those words, did you?' and I said 'I'm sorry Mum but I did', but she forgave me.

– Sir Ed Hillary on his famous quote re conquering Mt Everest

We thought we were really challenging the system to say 'bullshit' in a public place and boy, did the system come down on us.

– Tim Shadbolt on his rebellious past as a 'hippy' and societal commentator

Probably, on impulse when agitated by various people.

– Vox pop answer to question: do you use swear words?

...at least we never said f**k.

– Hutt wide boy Neville Purvis (Arthur Baysting) makes New Zealand television history in 1979

My parents didn't swear and it was 'low class to swear, darling' so you couldn't swear and when I heard people swear I just used to think you know 'what's that?' ... now my mum can swear, she's been living in New Zealand for the past 16 years, she can swear.

– Former TV presenter Melissa Lee on her family's attitude to swearing

I think actually we've cheapened our culture. I think where swearing use to be used as a kind of safety valve in crisis situations, very useful one at times, and everyone understood that. When it becomes commonplace and words which we consider coarse, or even foul language, are used on a day-to-day basis, especially by the young, then I think ... it's an indication that there's something not quite right with the mental health of a nation in a way.

– Columnist Amy Brooke on the popularity of swearing in New Zealand

It's like jargon, like you have a certain language in business, exactly like swearing is to hip hop, it's our own language we use, when someone swears and does it really nicely with a rhyme, you know we feel it more, we hear it better.

– Brother D from Dawn Raid on New Zealand hip hop's use of swear words in lyrics

It's a good Anglo-Saxon word, it comes from Germanic origins, the same with the 'c' word ... and a lot of the other four-letter words that we think of. But, most of our swear words come from Germanic origins, from the Anglo-Saxon root, so it's interesting and they've survived centuries...

– Sociolinguist Janet Holmes on the origins of an infamous swear word

Everybody got into it, everybody sang it, loudly and passionately because they felt they had the permission, men and women together in the same audience being able to say that, not feel bad about saying that or singing it and having fun with it.

– Georgina Beyer on singing 'The C**t Song' in play The Vagina Monologues

You can call somebody a drongo, a dingbat or a dipstick but you can't go any further than that, so bad language is 'unparliamentary' it's ruled out always by the Speaker if anybody has ever really had a go, and I must say I can't recall any particular bad language beyond a 'bugger' or 'bloody' maybe, but certainly nothing more profane than that. But outside the House I would think most politicians, with the exception maybe of the tambourine bashers in United Future...maybe they don't use it...

– Political reporter Barry Soper on the level of swearing by MPs