Foul language: Common swear words and phrases

🇩🇪 [Scheiße!] is very common in everyday speech for frustration or pain, but it's still vulgar. Safer milder options are [Mist!] or [verdammt!].

🇩🇪 [Verdammt!] is noticeably milder than [Scheiße!] or [fick dich!]. People use it fairly widely for annoyance without sounding maximally aggressive.

🇩🇪 [Mist!] is one of the safer swear-like words in German. It sounds more like mild frustration than a real insult.

🇩🇪 [Arschloch!] is a strong direct insult, not casual banter unless you know the person very well and the tone is obviously joking. Said seriously, it can escalate fast.

💬 With verbs like [verpissen], German often puts the main verb first in a command and the little partner at the end: [Verpiss dich!]. The same pattern shows up in [Hau ab!] and [Komm her!].

🇩🇪 This is very aggressive and confrontational. Don't treat it as playful slang unless you're absolutely sure the relationship supports that.

🇩🇪 [Halt die Klappe!] is a harsh way to tell someone to shut up. It's much ruder than [Sei still] or [Ruhe bitte].

🇩🇪 Using [du] here is not really about friendly informality; in insults, [du] is the normal direct form. The force comes from the insult itself, not from breaking a formality rule.

💬 [Blöde] changes shape because [Kuh] is feminine, so the describing word ends in [-e] here. Same pattern: [blöder Typ], [blödes Auto], [blöde Kuh].

🇩🇪 This insult is strongly gendered and aimed at women. It can sound especially nasty because it attacks the person and their gender at the same time.

💬 [Dumme] changes to match [Sau], which is feminine. Compare [dummer Hund], [dumme Sau], [dummes Zeug].

🇩🇪 [Sau] as an insult is very coarse and harsh. Even when not meant literally, it lands stronger than a mild word like [Idiot].