Warning: This article contains very strong language that may offend some readers.

When Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street was released in 2014, it had the questionable distinction of containing more F-bombs than any other drama — 2.83 per minute, a total of 506. Only a documentary about the word itself exceeds it in cinematic history, with 857 instances. But this is far from unusual for American films, in which profane words frequently number in the hundreds. Television tends to have stricter standards.

Back in 1972, the comedian George Carlin released an album including a monologue called Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. These days, you can hear all of them on cable television, but they remain taboo for network television shows. This has inspired creativity. As Dan Harmon, creator of the US sitcom Community, told the New York Times, “As a writer, you’re always reaching for a more potent way to call somebody a jerk. [Douche] is a word that has evolved in the last couple of years — a thing that sounds like a thing you can’t say.”

The influence of American films and television on British culture is strong. Any British person who hasn’t visited America could be forgiven for assuming that America is one giant cluster-cuss, its citizens dropping F-bombs like Eliza Doolittle dropped her Hs. But this isn’t necessarily so. There is a real puritanical streak in America that is much discussed — but little understood — by the British. It manifests itself in unpredictable ways, like an unwillingness to use seemingly innocuous words (the word ‘toilet’, for example) and a certain gentility when it comes to swearing.

For example, Americans consider it a big deal when a public figure is caught swearing. After President Obama declared his intention to “find out whose ass to kick” in connection with the BP oil spill, Time magazine published a Brief History of Political Profanity, saying that although “the comment wasn’t particularly vulgar… coarse language always seems shocking when it comes from the mouth of a President.” Americans — even presidents — use all kinds of language, but in real life swearing retains more of its shock value than you would imagine, if your primary contact with American culture were its movies.

It is not unusual, in the real America, to meet a graduate of the Ned Flanders School of Swearing. ‘Gosh darn it!’ ‘What the dickens?’ ‘What the flood?’ ‘Leapin’ Lazarus!’ Writer Julie Gray describes the phenomenon: “I recently said to someone that I’d be shocked as pink paint if something didn’t happen. My mother used to describe either a person or a situation that was going downhill as ‘going to hell in a hand basket’. My grandmother used to say ‘good NIGHT’ when something surprised or shocked her… I don’t know where I picked it up but I will sometimes say ‘H-E double toothpicks’ or ‘fudge’. Even Nicholson Baker, in his book House of Holes (promisingly subtitled ‘A Book of Raunch’), has his characters say things like “for gosh sakes”, “golly”, and “damnation” as well as the f-word, just to keep it real.