Did Not Do the Bloody Research: Difference between revisions

** They do know. It's just not used as profanity here (it's basically just used, mainly by older people, in its literal sense, and almost exclusively of animals). Saying "oh bollocks" sounds, to Americans, like saying "Oh pizzle" or "oh phallus".

* Often satirized on British magazine TV shows such as ''That's Life'', which sometimes featured foreign products which accidentally fell into this trope—such as (Danish) Bollux washing powder. Such a pity that was never marketed in the UK, imagine the campaign; "To all your tough laundry stains, say Bollux".

* [[wikipedia:Sacrebleu|"''Sacré bleu''!"]] in English-language works is a silly, meaningless expression that a stereotypical character will utter in order to demonstrate his or her [[Buffy-Speak|Frenchness]]. It means "holy blue" and could be a veiled reference to the sky-blue clothing traditionally worn by Mary (the mother of Jesus) in Roman Catholic illustrations. However, [http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/sacrebleu dictionaries explain it as being] [[Bowdlerise|a bowdlerization]], with "bleu" substituted for "Dieu" (God), occurring also in old phrases like "parbleu" ("by blue") or "morbleu" ("blue's death"). Such phrases are thus comparable to English phrases like "zounds" (from "God's wounds") or "dagnabitt" ("God damn it").

** Interestingly, "Sacrement!" and "Tabarnak!" <ref>sacrament and tabernacle</ref> and other French Catholic curses are still used in Quebec. It's common in English Canadian children's shows to have the [[Token Minority|French character]] say them as a way of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]], since they aren't swear words when translated into English.