Finnish profanity


Profanity in Finnish is used as in form of intensifiers, adjectives, adverbs and particles. There is also an aggressive mood that involves omission of the negative verb ei while implying its meaning with a swear word.
The words often have old origins and some have Pagan roots that after Christian influence were turned from names of deities and spirits to profanity and used as such. Etymologies are a mixture of religious words and ancient Finnish words involving excretions or sexual organs or functions. Nowadays few Finns know of the origins and intended original use of the words. A book called Suuri kirosanakirja has been compiled. The people in the neighbouring countries to Finland often consider Finnish swear words harsher than their own, and even use heavily mispronounced versions of them, most notably perkele. Native Finns tend to consider the harshness exaggerated, while others use it to their advantage.
Finns swear more than their Nordic neighbors or Central Europeans, reaching the same level as Scots or Russians.
Euphemistically, virtually any word can be used in place of profanity by for example preceding it with voi like or adding vieköön. These were more prominent in older Finnish, e.g. raato is closest to "corpse" or like peto "the beast". There are also other similar non-offensive constructs like taivahan talikynttilät. There is also an inventory of non-offensive curse words.

List of Finnish profanities

helvetti

hitto, hiisi

huora

jumalauta

kikkeli

kusi

kyrpä

mulkku

molo

muna

paska

perkele

perse

pillu

piru

reva

runkata

ryökäle

Saatana

skeida

vittu