I heard a new swear word and it makes me giggle.

It’s in a little Disney/Pixar short called Prep & Landing, a show about the advance teams of elves who prepare homes for Santa’s arrival. And not to sound like an ABC Family marketing exec but YOU MUST SEE IT.

The show has a couple good holiday-elf swear words, like “Figgy Pudding,” which is the elf elite special task force version of FUBAR, as in “it went Figgy Pudding on us.”

But my favorite was blurted by Magee, the North Pole Christmas Eve Command Center Coordinator, when she learns a huge storm is about to wreck their mission. She cusses:

“OH, FROSTBITE.”

I think I like it because it really is something bad. Like “PUKE!” It’s something just awful, but not obscene. That’s the BEST kind of swear word.

I know people who spew vile words like standard classroom vocabulary. There is just no creativity there.

I understand the need to express the magnitude of your emotions, but some curse words are so common they have become cliché.

I think it’s much MORE expressive to devise your own expletives.

For instance, there is a large cross-section of Pleasant Grove High School students who use “gross my dog!” to convey something that is SO DISGUSTING it would gross a dog out.

I don’t know who started it, but it’s creative.

At some point, I decided I wanted a phrase that was totally innocent, but when said with enough anger in my voice it would sound completely profane.

Thus was the birth of “MOTHERLESS CHICKENS!”

It’s my personal “queen mother of swear words.” And if I’m really, truly, COMPLETELY livid I may use the variation “SON OF A MOTHERLESS CHICKEN!”

I forget sometimes that it’s not actually profane – Until everyone around me cracks up laughing when I say it.

So how about you? What homegrown profanity do you say when everything goes Figgy Pudding? I told you mine, now you tell me yours.