I learned to cuss as a kid in English as well as Spanish (which I can't speak). Then I joined the Navy and enhanced my cussing vocabulary. Later I really learned cussing as a millwright in the mining industry. Now I have all that obscene vocabulary stored away and no occasion to use it.
@Ted Richards I am interested in your reference to having been a millwright. It's an unusual connotation, and I've often wondered if it carries with it an Apprenticeship requirement, like "Tool & Die Maker". Back in Chicago, working for Dana Corporation, my co-worker, Bruce, and I were assigned the job of designing and building a radically different machine capable of automating the process of molding rubber lipped oil seals. Here are a few pictures of the machine during it's construction in the Victor Seal Plant in Churubusco, Indiana. The girl in the third one is my wife's sister, then 15. Why I'm bringing this up is this: Between the big silver box, actually a huge oven, and the round turntable, sits the big hydraulic press we designed specifically for the machine. The four huge hex nuts which secure the top platen are visible in the bottom pic. The big "bolts" holding the press together, four of them, (technically called "strain rods"), were 3-inches in diameter and 6-feet long, threaded on both ends. I submitted my blueprint of the bolt to a shop which advertised making of custom machine parts. The bolts we got from them were unusable, not straight, terrible-looking threads. Somehow, I don't recall the circumstances, I conferred with one of our own Maintenance Shop Supervisors, and he called over a guy I already knew, but not well. His name was Dick Ignowski. I had seen him working on a variety of heavy jobs around the punch presses. His job title was unusual around there, "MILLWRIGHT". He may have been the only one, out of a Maintenance crew of perhaps 40 men. (The 5 Chicago plants employed around 4,000 people). Dick was about 45, thin and lean, personable, but cautiously so with "one of them Engineers"! Showing him the blueprint of the huge bolts we needed, after studying it a few minutes, he said to his boss, sure, he can make the bolts right in our own shop. I watched him once during the process, running a big lathe, the operation of which I was intimately familiar with: I had used my own lathe for about 15 years. The parts he made were perfect! Produced by a man talented beyond the capabilities of most. He was proficient in operating just about any toolroom machine. I got to operate the forklift when we assembled that big press, to the anger of the Union! It went together with ease! Thanks for reading my drivel....... Frank
In Canada there are many recognized apprenticeship trades that culminate in Journeyman classification. Millwrights are essentially industrial mechanics here separate from Journeyman machinists. Millwrights are essential in mining mills, feed mills, sawmills, etc.
In today's world having no occasion to use that obscene vocabulary is almost a miracle in itself @Ted Richards.