f-bomb

[Alice Faber]

Laurence Horn said:
>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?

Yeah, the "magic word(s)" is what gets you tossed from a baseball
game. "Dropping an F-bomb (or an N-bomb)" is essentially "fighting
words". So, dropping an F-bomb can get you tossed, and dropping an
N-bomb earns retaliation of sorts. It's definitely my impression that
the verb of utterance here is always "drop".

--
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Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
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