I guess I don't get out much. Of the movies from the wikiprofane list provided by codearchitect, I've seen three; Goodfellas, Scarface and Platoon. Most of the rest I never heard of. I'm thinkin' I'll stick with my library of movies and Netflix.

The last three times I went to the movies I didn't notice any cussing. I saw New Moon three times. ;) LOL The Twilight books didn't contain any profanity. I'll take a book over a movie any day. I'm reading Jane Eyre right now and there's no cursing in that book either. =P

What bothers me is all the sex & cursing in noncable network prime time tv shows. That stupid show 3&1/2 men, never seen the show, just the previews, & there is all kinds of sexual innuendo involved. You don't have to take the kids to the movies, but TV is a different animal.

From Wikipedia's entry on Profanity:

"Tape-recorded conversations find that roughly 80–90 spoken words each day—0.5% to 0.7% of all words—are swear words with people varying from between 0% to 3.4%. In comparison first person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity

Also here's a chart showing which films use the f-word the most, I have to say most of the films in the top 10 are not all that recent.

http://tinyurl.com/wikiprofane

Language and sex are way too much in the movies. Go to IMDB and read the parental advisory on the movie BEFORE spending $7.75 at the movies.

Yes it does Rebecca...odd huh?

@Rebecca, agreed all good points!

No, I have to correct myself. People don't choose to be offended by certain words; they are conditioned to be offended. So, we can hit on history AND psychology when we think about curse words. Speaking of psychology, Psychology Today recently published an article about how cursing actually does temporarily relieve stress. Interesting, huh?

My children have each went through phases where they wondered how a finger or a word could be bad. "It's a word" they say and I have to explain that since it offends people - or people choose to be offended by it - we won't use it... I would rather no one give it power, right. It's an interesting topic and the history of these words, yes, is interesting too! I hate to say, "because I said," when kids ask "why." I will ponder ideas with them.

The f-word and especially the c-word have been around for many hundreds of years (the c-word goes back to Anglo-Saxon times) so what we notice as increases and decreases are sure to be subjective and transient.

One could argue that if these words were MORE common place they would lose their status as offensive and be replaced by something else...

Language evolves over time, it will be fun to see what it will look (and sound) like in a couple hundred years from now.

I guess Hollywood just took the profanity cue from Rev. Wright in Chicago. After all, if the preacher uses the GD word in a sermon, what is off limits?

No, you are not the only one who has nocticed a spike in profanity. I would also agree there has been a substanial change this year. There is a website something like "kids movie ratings" or something similiar and it shares the number of times the f-word is used and it is an eye-opener. "Cops Out" movie used the f-word like 119 times and movies you would think would not have the f-word will have used the f-word like 20-30 times not to mention all the other words. But, the profanity has worsened in the last year, no doubt. While we debate the issue of English becoming America's language, I fear profanity is becoming America's language.

No, you're not the only one who has noticed. I'm not easily offended and have been know to utter an appropriate anglo-saxon profanity myself on occasion when warranted. In the movies, however, I do find it sad the people who write'em -- people who make their (very good) living with language -- can't seem to get their point across without being foul. It's one reason I seldom go to the movies -- I also object to the price. So, I watch some from my collection of some 400 DVDs or select one on Netflix. It's not only much more enjoyable, I get to see movies I like and the popcorn's a lot cheaper.

No, you are not the only one. Just one more instance of the degradation of our civilization courtesy of the liberals who do not believe there is any such thing as absolute ethics and morals; everything is relative.

Why spend the cash that's in such short supply, thanks to the scum in congress and the white house? You can get the same fare right in your TV rooms.