A list of roughly 400 English words that Shutterstock uses to filter its own autocomplete and recommendation systems — so that a search for something innocuous does not suggest something else. It was published openly in 2012 and has been maintained since, with versions in more than two dozen languages.
It is worth being clear about what kind of list this is. It was not assembled to catalogue offence, or to rank it. It exists to stop a stock photography site embarrassing itself, which makes it broad rather than severe: alongside genuine slurs it carries anatomical terms, sexual acts and a good deal of internet vocabulary that is crude without being aimed at anybody. Several entries are phrases rather than words.
That breadth is the reason it is useful here. A list built by people trying to avoid trouble catches vocabulary that a list built by people studying offence tends to leave out, and whether any of it actually causes offence is the question this site exists to put to its readers rather than one the source answers.
Where it comes from
Compiled and published by Shutterstock, Inc., and available at github.com/LDNOOBW. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence, which asks only that the source is credited — which is what this page is for.
Terms taken from it are marked as such on their own pages, and carry no rating from the source: the ratings on this site come from its visitors.