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The UK Cities Swearing the Most Online
For most, swearing is an everyday part of life. Studies have shown that people who swear more could be more intelligent, more creative, and more honest. Whether you believe that or not, it’s hard to avoid coming across expletive language, especially online. And with Brits known for being potty-mouthed, we were left wondering which UK cities are most guilty of breaking out the profanities?
To find out, the digital PR experts at Reboot took to popular forum site Reddit to analyse over four million comments and examine the UK’s most populated cities’ subreddits to find out just how many of the comments included profanity and the most common swear words involved.
The UK Cities Swearing the Most Online
1. Glasgow
We can reveal the city that swears the most online is Glasgow. With over 132,000 members and 916,467 messages analysed, r/Glasgow comes out with swear words in 15.18% of comments. Glasgow’s favourite swear word is f*ck, with nearly 21 mentions of the word per 100 comments.
2. Liverpool
The second sweariest city is Liverpool. Just below Glasgow, our analysis uncovered that 8.72% of comments contained some kind of profanity. Amongst the over 47,000 members of the subreddit, sh*t is the firm favourite.
3. London
Ranking third is London as 8.61% of comments contain a swear word—with the most favoured being f*ck. With the largest subreddit at over 872,000 members and 268,117 comments analysed, it is unsurprising that Londoners like to let off a bit of steam.
4. Edinburgh
The fourth sweariest city is Edinburgh. Just below London, users of this city’s dedicated subreddit swear in 8.49% of their comments. With a whopping 556,019 comments analysed and over 146,000 members, Edinburgh follows Glasgow and London with the most used profanity as f*ck, with just under a third of those sweary comments containing it.
5. Belfast
Ranking fifth is Belfast. Their subreddit has over 34,000 members and we analysed 74,448 of their comments. Turns out, they too are fond of regularly dropping a “f*ck”, and swear in 8.33% of their comments. r/Belfast users also like to add “sh*t” in almost 29% of their comments.
The Cities Swearing the Least Online
1. Derby
The city that swears the least is Derby with just 4.92% of comments containing an expletive. Their subreddit has 31,700 members and over 20,000 comments, with most common swear word of this region being sh*t.
2. Coventry
Coventry comes in at the second politest UK city with 5.12% of comments containing a swear word. Out of 11,525 comments analysed, we found that their swear word of choice is sh*t, followed by f*ck.
3. Sheffield
In third place for city that swears the least is Sheffield with just 5.15% of Reddit comments coming with a profanity. This is even more impressive when you realise the subreddit has over 85,000 members and 128,963 comments were analysed.
4. Nottingham
Nottingham ranks 17th out of the 20 cities in this study. The r/Nottingham subreddit has over 65,000 members and we analysed 133,460 comments from them. Nottingham’s most used expletive is sh*t with 29.29% of sweary comments containing it, closely followed by f*ck (25.16%).
5. Southampton
Southampton comes in at the fifth politest UK city with 6.02% of comments including a swear word. r/Southampton isn’t a small subreddit either, with over 34,000 momber. When they do feel the need to vent though, their swear word of choice is sh*t!
The UK’s Most Common Swear Words
If you’ve been paying attention, the you’ll most likely have guessed that the UK’s favourite swear seems to be f*ck. Over 30% of the 3.7 million comments analysed included this profanity. And why not? It’s one of the most versatile words out there!
Just missing out on the top spot is sh*t, with 27.67% of analysed comments containing it. However, this is a firm favourite of numerous cities, including Hull, Leeds, and Newcastle upon Tyne.
In third place for the UK’s most common swear words is, surprisingly… c*nt ?. While only 7.25% of comments used this expletive, it was still more popular than p*ss (4.12%) and cr*p (4.09%).
“Other” swear words, such as b*tch, t*its, and bullsh*t, make up 25.92% of the profanity-laden comments.
Which Are the Favourite Swear Words of UK Cities?
Every single city in this study either had either f*ck or sh*t as their most-used swear word, apart from two: Cardiff and Portsmouth. Reddit users in the subreddits of these cities opted for a mixture of lesser-used expletives like d*ck, tw*t, or w*nk.
Southampton citizens are the top users of cr*p out of all cities in this study, with 8.39% of their swear-filled comments using the term.
If p*ss is your favourite profanity, then you’d fit in on Sheffield as this subreddit includes the highest usage of the word at 6.11%.
The Sweariest Day of the Week
Ever wake up and just feel like swearing? Well, if that day was a Saturday then you’re in good company. We found that comments on this day had the highest percentage of expletives included, at 9.38%.
Following just behind is Thursday, with 9.34% of comments containing some kind of swear word. Perhaps people just can’t wait for the weekend?
It turns out people swear the least on Tuesdays. Our research found that just 8.92% of comments on this day included a profanity.
| Subreddit/City |
Comments Analysed |
Total Users Analysed | Comments Containing Swearwords | Users Who Have Sworn | % of Comments With Swear Words | % of Users Who Have Sworn |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glasgow | 916,467 | 46,118 | 139,092 | 18,376 | 15.18% | 39.85% |
| Liverpool | 50,408 | 7,073 | 4,395 | 1,492 | 8.72% | 21.09% |
| London | 268,117 | 63,943 | 23,073 | 11,019 | 8.61% | 17.23% |
| Edinburgh | 556,019 | 42,430 | 47,210 | 15,906 | 8.49% | 37.49% |
| Belfast | 74,448 | 10,056 | 6,201 | 3,446 | 8.33% | 34.27% |
| Bradford | 6,946 | 1,134 | 532 | 282 | 7.66% | 24.87% |
| Bristol | 505,610 | 40,070 | 38,032 | 15,347 | 7.52% | 38.30% |
| Leicester | 44,122 | 5,620 | 3,311 | 2,082 | 7.50% | 37.05% |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | 122,708 | 11,998 | 8,676 | 5,423 | 7.07% | 45.20% |
| Manchester | 22,965 | 8,037 | 1,610 | 1,023 | 7.01% | 12.73% |
| Portsmouth | 26,778 | 3,586 | 1,837 | 1,156 | 6.86% | 32.24% |
| Hull | 17,292 | 2,946 | 1,184 | 760 | 6.85% | 25.80% |
| Leeds | 32,950 | 5,110 | 2,180 | 1,451 | 6.62% | 28.40% |
| Birmingham | 666,409 | 27,553 | 42,411 | 16,958 | 6.36% | 61.55% |
| Cardiff | 107,632 | 10,725 | 6,601 | 4,720 | 6.13% | 44.01% |
| Southampton | 81,997 | 7,424 | 4,937 | 3,762 | 6.02% | 50.67% |
| Nottingham | 133,460 | 14,485 | 7,888 | 5,787 | 5.91% | 39.95% |
| Sheffield | 128,963 | 13,152 | 6,648 | 5,632 | 5.15% | 42.82% |
| Coventry | 11,525 | 2,390 | 590 | 493 | 5.12% | 20.63% |
| Derby | 10,184 | 2,201 | 501 | 412 | 4.92% | 18.72% |
*Note that comments on a city’s subreddit may not necessarily reflect the semantics of those that inhabit the city.
Methodology
1. SEO company, Reboot conducted a content analysis of over four million comments on subreddits concerning UK cities, in order to highlight those with the most foul-mouthed Redditors. The study ranks cities in descending order of comment swear word percentage.
2. Firstly, a seed list of 20 UK cities together with their respective subreddits was acquired. The most popular subreddits for each city were chosen on the basis of member counts. City subreddits have been distinguished from those relating to specific football teams.
3. The comments endpoint on the Pushshift API is queried to acquire a significant sample of comments from each subreddit. The resulting dataset contained over four million comments from over 320,000 users.
4. Content analysis of the comments collected resulted in a binary classification of each comment based on the existence of a swear word.
5. Aggregations by city were subsequently performed to calculate the percentage of comments containing swear words, and the percentage of users who had mentioned a swear word in any of their comments within our sample.
*Note that comments on a city’s subreddit may not necessarily reflect the semantics of those that inhabit the city.
