Swear words are loaded with those satisfying crunchy consonants like Ks and Ts and Gs that add a harsh, stabbing sound to words whose definitions are jagged to begin with. And yet, for as much as those words seem scientifically optimized and specifically engineered to stick and pierce and linger, new research from the University of Vienna suggests that those same sounds might actually be making those words less memorable.

Polishing their findings in PLOS One, researchers Theresa Matzinger and David Košić built twelve nonsense words using English sound rules: some were soft and silky like “clisious” and “sleemious.” Others were designed to be the verbal version of a medieval mace — spiky bludgeoning nonsense words like “gruhious” and “twuhious.”

The researchers then gathered together a hu

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