Fuck an A

[Millie Webb]

I am glad it is not just me, Ron.  I also had always assumed it was
"f*cking-A", half the time with "f*ckin" instead of the -ing, and I had only
heard it with a preceding "you" or ANYTHING following it (John, Charlie,
etc.) fewer than ten times ever.  I did not have the sense at all, growing
up (in the 70s and 80s -- having almost never heard it since then) that it
meant something like "you are so right".  To me, it was always much more of
a rejoinder of surprise, or even upset (for example, "Fuckin-A, I can't
believe he did that.").  Maybe I just misunderstood it all those years, but
I certainly had the sense in the groups I "hung" in, that it was somewhat
negative, always a surprise, and sometimes even a shocked response.  --
Millie

----- Original Message -----
From: <RonButters at AOL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 10:59 AM
Subject: Fuck an A


>>
> Just for the record, I tried this out on my students, all linguistics
majors
> in a capstone seminar, and all nine native speakers liked "-ing" rather
than
> "an." And all nine had never heard the phrase prefixed with "you" or
suffixed
> with "John" or anything else. It had never occured to them to speculate
about
> what "A" could mean.
>
>