The Periodic Table of Swearing is undoubtedly the Holy Grail of cursing – too bad you’ll be cussing up a storm when you hear the price tag.
The idea behind the table is pretty simple – you press a button, and you hear a man’s voice spout the swear that corresponds to whatever button you pressed. The table itself is based on technology used in ENIAC, the first electronic computer. In an admittedly clever design choice, the 103 buttons are organized in a way that at least riffs on the ordering of the actual periodic table – the heavy metal section is reserved for the really nasty stuff, while the area closer to the noble gases is (relatively) classier. And, just like how most people can’t name too many elements in the lanthanides or actinindes groups, you’ll be seeing some swears way out of left field in those areas. The curse phrases are in British English, as the video in the link will make clear.
So, how much will it cost you to be able to hear curse words and phrases at the touch of a button? A wholly unreasonable, egregious £50,000. That’s $77,815.32. That’s far and away more offensive than any swear that’s going to be found on this table. But, how will the rest of us ever hear those amazing curse words without ponying up the cash? If only we had some way of using vibrations to form words. Like, some sort of membranes, maybe in the throat or something, that could allow us to make different sounds when we exhale and move our mouths. Too bad we don’t have those, guess we’ll have to save our pennies if we ever want to lob those vaunted swear words.