Linguistic variants and derivatives

Various euphemisms, minced forms and in-jokes are used to imply the word without actually saying it, thereby escaping obvious censure and censorship.

Spoonerisms and acronyms

Deriving from a dirty joke: "What's the difference between a circus and a strip club?"- "The circus has a bunch of cunning stunts...", the phrase cunning stunt has been used in popular music. Its first documented appearance was by the English band Caravan who released the album Cunning Stunts in July 1975; the title was later used by Metallica for a CD/Video compilation, and in 1992 the Cows released analbum with the same title. In his 1980s BBC television programme, Kenny Everett played a vapid starlet, Cupid Stunt, and in 2005 comedian Al Murray has hosted a British television comedy game show, Fact Hunt.

There are numerous informal acronyms, including various apocryphal stories concerning academic establishments, such as the Cambridge University National Trust Society.

There are many variants of the covering phrase "See you next Tuesday", including a play of that title by Ronald Harwood.

Puns

The name "Mike Hunt" is a frequent substitute; it has been used in a scene from the movie Porky's, and for a character in the BBC radio comedy Radio Active in the 1980s. "Has Anyone Seen Mike Hunt?" were the words written on a "pink neon sculpture" representing the letter C, in a 2004 exhibition of the alphabet at the British Library in collaboration with the International Society of Typographic Designers.

As well as obvious references, there are also allusions. On I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Stephen Fry once defined countryside as the act of "murdering Piers Morgan". In Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Donna and Gaz are perusing erotic novels when they come across The Count of Monte Cristo; Gaz helpfully informs Donna that 'it doesn't say Count'. Similarly, in an episode of Spaced, Sophie tells Tim that she can't see him as there's been a misprint on the title of one of the magazines she works on – Total Cult. In all these uses, the audience are left to make the connection.

Even Parliaments are not immune from punning uses; as recalled by former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam:

Never in the House did I use the word which comes to mind. The nearest I came to doing so was when Sir Winton Turnbull, a member of the cavalleria rusticana, was raving and ranting on the adjournment and shouted: "I am a Country member". I interjected "I remember". He could not understand why, for the first time in all the years he had been speaking in the House, there was instant and loud applause from both sides.

and Mark Lamarr used a variation of this same gag on BBC TV's Never Mind the Buzzcocks. "Stuart Adamson was a Big Country member... and we do remember".

Rhyming slang

Several celebrities have had their names used as euphemisms, including footballer Roger Hunt, actor Gareth Hunt, singer James Blunt, and 1970s motor-racing driver James Hunt, whose name was once used to introduce the British radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue as "the show that is to panel games what James Hunt is to rhyming slang".

A canting form of some antiquity is berk, short for "Berkeley Hunt" or "Berkshire Hunt", and in a Monty Python sketch, an idioglossiac man replaces the initial "c" of words with "b", producing "silly bunt". Scottish comedian Chic Murray claimed to have worked for a firm called "Lunt, Hunt & Cunningham".