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How did ancient Greeks swear and curse? : AskHistorians

Tags
#classics
Date added
Sept. 22, 2021, 4:47 a.m.
Description
Aristophanes offers us plenty of Greek insults. Lots of them deal with feces, especially eating or shitting on others. Plenty deal with sex. Because Greeks compounded we have a lot of these that very directly translate into English, such as "koprophagos", "shit-eater" and "metrokoites", "mother-fucker", "kunops", "bitch (literally female dog)-face" or just "kun" or "kuna", "bitch" applied equally to men and women. The most common curse to a god is "ma Dia", "by Zeus", but you can find most gods' names in the accusative after "ma" for this like "ma Heran" or "ma Apollona".