Tabarnak!

[supergee]

Years ago, I learned from a book on hockey (I think it was Ken Dryden’s The Game) that French Canadians use church words (meaning tabernacle, chalice, etc.) as offensive expletives. Here’s an article about it, from which we learn that some of the words even have cleaned-up versions. One theory the article doesn’t mention is that the approach comes from offering to excrete in the sacred entity, like the Spanish in Hemingway novels who “unname in the milk of thy….”

Thanx to Metafilter