Blimey. 
Drat, Blast, Darn and Shucks(US) is what Word Reference has for Zut. Go wash your mouth out. 
BTW, and this may have been mentioned before, but ‘Blimey’, very mild now along with ‘Bloody’, both used to be fairly strong blasphemies, also ‘Stripe Me’.
The advantage of getting into the habit of using ‘zut’ is that it can be used with adults and kids alike. There’s no risk of grandchildren etc being offended as they use the word too ! It’s a habit thing I suppose. It’s more difficult to control my feelings in English where I was also used to work settings where effing and blinding was the norm.
I love that euphemistic phrase, I know all about the ‘effing’, but I suppose the ‘blinding’ is another religious thing like ‘blimey’ that I mentioned above.
I’ll just throw in gently… that my Dad did not approve of swearing and didn’t allow us kids to use certain words/phrases…
In those days, bad language certainly wasn’t the norm in our seaside neighbourhood, which was mostly made up of young families who’d moved from London for a better life.
As a result of my upbringing, I can say a respectable word/phrase with enough emotion to convey my feelings… (whatever they might be…) 
sadly, the same word, when written, conveys nothing much… 
My vocal “arrêtes” growled with multiple rolled “rrrrr’s” and a perfect copy of our current Secretaire, can have someone flinching and/or laughing… it all depends on the delivery and the situation…
Sounds like my dad Stella.I never heard him swear other than ‘blooming’. My mum, more down to earth came out with the occasional ‘bloody’ or ‘sod it’ but that’s about all. Us three boys grew up in a decent environment where swearing wasn’t the norm and so have turned out to be like that with our respective families.
(slight thread drift) My Dad also taught my brothers to be gentle with their sisters…
Men don’t hit/hurt women… boys don’t hit/hurt girls…
EDIT My elder brother did complain that there should be a similar rule about sisters not trying to kick their brothers…
Mine too. In all my life with him I only heard him swear once, when I got kicked out of college for a minor offence and refused on principal to make amends in order to be taken back, he said ‘what did you do a silly bloody thing like that for?’
Later I realised why my actions had wound him up to that pitch. Strictly speaking I had needed O-Level Maths to get in in the first place and stayed on a term at school to do so. I failed but he had a word with a friend who mattered and was accepted. I think I would have been hard put to restrict myself to ‘bloody’ in similar circumstances.
I failed maths miserably but still managed to get into a maritime college and pass my radio and electronics C & G. My arithmetic is brill, it’s just all those algebraic functions etc. I was and still am, totally clueless…
When I was seventeen my mother accused me of using the ‘F’ word out in the street. We lived in a really rough part of London but I never felt any inclination to need to swear, even now. I hadn’t sworn as my mother thought and I protested my innocence and got a full slap across the face at the breakfast table. And that was because mum thought I was lying.
The nearest I get to swearing, and it’s not really swearing, more exclamations to myself, such as ‘blimey!’ ‘christ almighty!’ or ‘bugger me!’. I’m sure dad, being a lifelong London black-taxi-cab driver, swore, but never at home.
If I hit my thumb with a hammer, it’ll be ‘Ouch’ out loud.
My long-gone dinosaurian French farming family neighbours rarely used swearwords except Robert, who did most of the heavy arduous farming work, and that would usually be ‘putain’. But I’d hear that when he was on his own, not in company, but within my hearing distance. I think I had really polite French neighbours back then.
I add that my parents never used physical punishment on my brother or myself, except in one case when mum mistakenly thought I was swearing and lying, and that was understandable, and she is forgiven.
Coincidence, mine was a maritime college too, King Edward VII.
I hated mathematics at school, yet managed to scrape an O level pass by the skin of my teeth.
My relief was short lived as my Technician Apprenticeship at BAe involved a BTEC HNC in Electrical and Electronic Engineering which another 4 years of having to master utterly meaningless formulae that I never used once outside of the classroom.
I went to Lowestoft COFE which had the two- year course. Great place top lecturers, all ex MN sparkies.
@Peter_Bird
We moved to Suffolk just after I’d finished my GCE’s and I couldn’t see the point in continuing my education at any establishment where I didn’t know a single soul… so I went and got my first job
Barclays Bank, Lowestoft… (not that I knew anyone there, but I felt more in charge of my life…)
Great town, lovely people… very happy memories.
Know it well, down the High St not far from the station. Not far from Jarrolds.
Yeah, Lowestoft is or was what it was, a fishing port with no frills. Some good pubs in the day. We would often eat lunch either in The Crown, The Speadeagle, The Trowel & Hammer at Pakefield or The Wherry at OB. I lived between Lowestoft and Gt Y so handy for both towns. My good lady was teaching at The Kirkley High.
I was always brilliant at maths. I hadn’t realised I was sharing the ether with such a lot of numpties.
The truth is that it was a subject that required next to no effort from me at school, and at university I enjoyed the work so it didn’t seem like work. So I can’t boast in any sense 
Now I wish I had others’ skill with languages!
I scored grade ‘U’ unclassified at maths O level because it made no sense and I had no interest. So much is dependent on teaching and interest, I’ve had to learn a lot since.
I did maths O level when I was 12 or 13 because I was so rubbish at maths, after a year of lessons by myself. There was no expectation I would pass it of course, it was just so we could all see how much needed to be done. Anyway miraculously I got a C which was all I needed in that particular subject in order to get into university.
I did French, Latin, and scripture at the same time but that was because I was good at them, my school believed in belting through O levels if you could so you could then do more subjects.
I regret now not having continued maths as I love chemistry and think I might well have preferred to do something scientific rather than arts based. All my scientific friends are very arts-literate, it isn’t the same the other way round.
Or the belt
