It's no longer an offence to tell someone to f*** off because the term is now so widely used, Italy's top court ruled Tuesday.
The Court of Cassation, Italy's highest appeals court whose rulings set precedents, quashed the conviction of an Abruzzo town councillor who had told a deputy mayor 'where to go' during a stormy council meeting.
In its ruling, the court said that certain obscene or sexual words or phrases had become so common that they "have lost their offensive nature".
Conservative lawmakers immediately decried the ruling as liable to "degrade the nation's civic values" and called for the judge who issued it to be sacked.
Tuesday's ruling is not the first time the Cassation judges have courted controversy with verdicts changing the official line on offensive language.
A year ago they said it was OK to hurl abuse at someone provided the other side gave as good as it got.
The court said a woman was entitled to call an acquaintance a "bastard, fool, a cretin and a drug addict" because the insults had been "mutual".
"There was justification for the crime," said the judges.
It was the second case on "mutual insults" to make its way to the supreme court last year.
In March, judges acquitted a woman who called an immigrant co-worker a 'bloody n**ger'.
Upholding an earlier ruling, they said the woman's reaction was justified because the man had "cursed" her family and her insult was an "equivalent" response.
Rulings by Italy's supreme court are a source of endless delight for the national media.
Some cases have sparked international outcries.
The court's most notorious decision came in a highly publicized 'jeans rape' case in 1999, in which it decided that a woman who removes tight jeans, even under threat, is complicit in rape.
In another divisive ruling, the court said that bottom-patting was all right provided it was a "sudden and isolated act".
Both rulings were later reversed.
One that wasn't was the quashing last year of a rape conviction against a young man who continued having sex with his partner even though she changed her mind halfway through.
Other puzzling sentences have included giving the thumbs up for paedophiles to take porn photos of minors so long as they didn't sell them, and upholding an adultery rap against a woman who kissed a bus driver because "the time and emotion invested in the relationship betrayed marital trust".
