Taboos against what we would today consider pretty mild exclamations like "damn!" "hell ... and they've left their mark on our vocabulary. Gosh, gee, golly, dagnamit, darn, drat, gadzooks ...

Sh** and b***h are most common across stretches of the Deep South, which also has a preference for the word damn. The representation of some words may be swayed by their multiple uses, however.