f-bomb

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:13 AM -0400 8/31/04, Baker, John wrote:
>         "F-bomb" was new to me too.  Westlaw's allnewsplus file has
>1252 examples, though some are for "f.... bomb" and the like.  For
>2004, there are 441 uses of "f-bomb" and 5820 uses of "f-word."  The
>earliest examples are from baseball, with the earliest this 8/11/88
>use in Newsday:
>
>         <<Carter rarely uses profanity, so he was taken aback when
>umpire Greg Bonin leveled some on him in the seventh inning Monday
>night in Pittsburgh. Carter was called out on strikes and told Bonin
>he thought the pitch was outside. "He started cursing me and said I
>accused him of being a liar," Carter said. "After he started
>cursing, I walked away and I said, 'Why are you cursing at me?' He
>said, 'I talk like that.' I said, 'OK, guttermouth.' " Carter said
>he has been thrown out only twice in the majors, both times by Eric
>Gregg. "That was when I used to use the F-bomb." >>
>
>John Baker

this is interesting.  I'd guess that most of the occasions on which I
heard "f-bomb" were precisely in this context--discussing why a
baseball player (or, occasionally, a basketball player) was ejected
from the game (or, in basketball, why he--never she AFAIK--earned a
technical foul).   In baseball, this is sometimes referred to as
"(uttering) the magic word".  Alice, can you confirm my intuition on
this?

Larry