f-bomb

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:59 PM -0500 8/30/04, Tom Kysilko wrote:
>My informal sense it that I am hearing "f-bomb" much more frequently than
>"f word" nowadays -- perhaps because there is a greater need for an
>expression referring to f word tokens than the f word type.  In spite of
>this need, however, the earliest instance I could find in Google Groups
>(cited below) dates from 1990.  I'm interested in what Larry Horn or any of
>the active antedaters have on it.  It's not in the post-1999 archives.

Jesse would be the reigning (or, to link with the eggcorn thread, the
raining/reining) authority here.  I like the idea that f word : f
bomb :: type : token, although there's clearly more to it than that,
e.g. intention of speaker/writer, context of utterance, intended and
actual perlocutionary effect, etc.

>>Subject: Re: A little philiogy [sic]
>>Newsgroups: alt.sex
>>Date: 1990-10-29 16:35:49 PST
>>
>>As I understand it, (or at least what I read in a Carl
>>Sagan book), the "F-word" derives not from Italian or
>>English, but from the German "fokken," apparently meaning
>>to strike.

which, if my memory is accurate, is not quite right, although I'm
sure Carl Sagan got billions and billions of etymologies correct

L

>>
>>Now I took high-school German and don't remember this
>>word, but I think that's what I read.  I also recall
>>an article saying that the etymology of the f-bomb
>>has been labeled "hopelessy unclear" by etymologists.
>>
>>But what the fuck do I know, anyway?
>>-D
>
>
>   Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
>   pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA
>           http://www.visi.com/~pds