f-bomb

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 09:37:33AM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
> 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.

I'm afraid I don't know of any earlier example (I haven't done
any searching). I was not familiar with this or its family until
rather recently--the first one I remember hearing was _H-bomb_
'degree from or other connection to Harvard'.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED