Bugger is one of the high ranking words of decent, and indecent, English. Depending on the context it’s even more flexible than Annie Sprinkle. Bugger can be used to swear at someone, curse, describe your own mood, describe something as broken and even describe a sexual act of the most depraved kind. Which may happen to be entirely fun anyway!
Your own mood
Ever sat down at the end of the day unable to move? Feel like your arms are about to fall off? So tired that even if your friendly blonde (guy or girl) hit on you that you wouldn’t even be able to respond in the positive way? Yes, dear reader! You are officially buggered.
Broken
You’re driving somewhere in your nice car. Radio’s on, AC blasting away, bright sunshine. All of a sudden, your crankshaft explodes into a bazillion little pieces and leaves you stranded. Our friend works twice in this situation. Your car is now buggered (because it’s broken), and now YOU are buggered because you can’t make a relatively instant fix and resume your journey, potentially making you late for whatever it is you were doing. Lets just hope its not a date with that blonde we mentioned earlier, eh eh eh?
Swearing
This one you need to be careful about. Most people have no idea what you’re saying (unless they’re Australian, have read this article or know their own Australian friends), but for about any situation that you would say FUCK, you can replace it with bugger. Be careful here too, because it isn’t an exact match. For instance motherfucker does NOT turn into motherbugger. You also cannot say get buggered, that will always be get fucked. Instead of fuck it, you say bugger it. This aspect can take some practice but will be perfect once you learn the little nuances of when to say bugger, and when not to.
Sodomy
In a little known twist of English, bugger and sodomy are pretty much the same thing. That is, cleaner names for the act of buttsecks. Sodomy itself is cleaner than bugger and will always be the path taken for official documents. There isn’t a whole lot more to say about this since buttsecks doesn’t come up daily in most of our regular daytime conversation. Keep in mind that most times you’ll hear bugger in this context is in deference to your nation’s local sheep shagging culture. In Australia we refer to New Zealand in this manner in much the same way every nation picks on each other (them Kiwis are a bunch of sheep buggers), but beyond that I dare all my readers to think of a genuine way to use it in normal conversation. Good luck!
Nothing much
Pay attention here, all you Americans who hate country and western stuff, but still insist on using “all” as a reference to a roomful of people. Bugger all is NOT the same as howdy’all. Ever. At all. Ever. If you ask an Aussie what he did last night, and his response is “bugger all”, he isn’t telling everyone present to get fucked. He’s actually saying “nothing much”, “nothing of consequence” or “nothing worth mentioning”. Quite a big difference there, don’t you think? This can also doubly refer to how much of something is left. To a question such as “How much fuel is left in the tank?”, and discovering how little there is, our Aussie hero will answer “bugger all”.
Go away
In one last twist of this glorious word, bugger can be used to tell someone where to go. For instance, if a nice policeman asks you to do something that sounds crazy you always respond with a clear bugger off instead of the healthy fuck off you may be currently using. S/he will have a belly laugh with you, and then you’ll both go your separate ways. Ah, thats the spirit. Tell everyone you meet to bugger off, and you won’t have a care in the world.
Conclusion
Bugger off, the lot of you. You bunch of sheep buggering buggers. 🙂