Minced Oaths

“Expletive-deletive” redirects here. For the linguistic expression

“Freakin” redirects here.

A minced oath (also pseudo-profanity or expletive-deletive) is an expression based on a profanity that has been altered to reduce the objectionable characteristics of the original expression, for example, darn or dang instead of damn, shoot instead of shit, heck instead of hell, or flipping, freaking, fricking, frakking or fecking or fragging instead of fucking. Many languages have these expressions. In the English Language, nearly all profanities have minced variants.


The most common methods of forming a minced oath are rhyme and alliteration. Thus the word bloody can become blooming, bleeding, or ruddy. Alliterative minced oaths such as darn for damn allow ming slang, rhyming euphemisms are often truncated so that the rhyme is eliminated: prick became Hampton Wick and then simply Hampton. Alliteration can be combined with metrical equivalence, as in "Judas Priest," substituted for blasphemous use of "Jesus Christ