Still, Octavio Paz, in his classic look at his country’s psyche, “The Labyrinth of Solitude,” spent some time assessing Mexican curses. “The forbidden words boil up in us, just as our emotions boil up,” he wrote. “When they finally burst out, they do so harshly, brutally, in the form of a shout, a challenge, an offense. They are projectiles or knives. They cause wounds.”

Exactly what is considered a bad word in Mexico can require some interpretation. There are various types of insults, some comparing people to animals, others referring to the diminished mental capacity of the recipient. Others refer to sex, naturally, using that most Mexican of words, “chingar,” which the Royal Spanish Academy of Language says is a derivative of the word “to fight” but that in Mexico can be very offensive or very innocuous or virtually anything in between.

“It is definitely personal,” the survey said of Mexicans’ propensity for cursing. “The same word applied in different contexts and in two different moments is seen in very different manners.”

It is almost always obvious, of course, when a curse is meant as a curse.

A woman walking by a group of construction workers the other day left no doubt as to her message when the men whistled at her and she shouted out a response. The electrical workers who were recently fired by President Felipe Calderón also clearly wanted the worst impression possible to be read into the protest signs they lofted. One banner, a tame one, referred to Mr. Calderón as a “pinche ladrón,” which can be translated as a “damn crook.” Pinche, though, can also be a word with no negative connotation at all, meaning a cook’s assistant.

A taxi driver who was trying to navigate through the electrical workers’ demonstration also used a string of sexually charged expletives when it became clear that his Volkswagen Beetle was going nowhere anytime soon.

It turns out, there is plenty to curse about in Mexico these days. The economy is in the doldrums, with a decline of 8 percent, one of the worst contractions in the world, expected this year. The politicians are up to their usual antics, and drug traffickers continue to rampage, competing with one another to see who can kill their opponents in the most gruesome fashion.