And the map for "damn," in fact, looks a whole lot like the map for another slightly vulgar-but-not-too-offensive word, "hell." Once again: The Deep South. And lastly: "Gosh." It's perhaps not ...

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.

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 ...