Swear words lack the consonant sounds l, r, w and y across several languages – including Chinese, English and Spanish, according to a new study from researchers at Royal Holloway, University of ...

To make the word pairs, the authors modified each word to contain either an approximant or a more forceful paired consonant sound known as an affricate (such as “ts” in “tsar”).

What’s been less well explored is which sounds don’t wind up in curses—which ones soften the sound of a word so that it can’t pack the angry, cathartic power that common curse words do ...

In English, the R sound is known as the alveolar approximant, which means the tongue flicks backwards close to the alveolar ridge, but doesn't quite touch it.

One member of each pair contained an approximant and the other a control sound, for example, ch. We played them to 215 speakers of a variety of languages (Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German ...

Those four consonant sounds are known as approximants -- sounds that only slightly restrict the vocal tract but otherwise allow air to flow freely when they're uttered.