omg, how did I miss this thread? Is my French degree actually coming in handy???
"Connard" ("con" for short) is by far the most common one (IME - all of my time has been spend in north and south France and Paris; not familiar with regional craziness to the eastern or western sides
). It means jerk/prick/bastard/whatever. Someone cuts you off driving, you yell "Connard !" or "Espèce de con !" - female equivalent is "connasse" (=most common word for bitch).
"Putain !" is used exactly like "Fuck!" over here (also "putain de ___" = "fucking ___"); you rarely hear it as a noun (well, NEVER, from young people. "Pute" is the noun for whore/slut. "Salope" means slut but I never heard it really, even hanging around large groups of teenagers for extended periods of time).
re: "obscene" or not - FTR, swear words are not really as shocking/forceful in French as they are in English (again IME). 14-year-olds say "putain" and the parents MIGHT lazily go "hey, watch your language." It's not like a kid saying "fuck" here.
What specific insults are you needing? There are lots of colorful ways to say things. It also depends on how realistic you want to go, because most real people are just going to use the swear words^.
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