? ? ? keep a cow

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:30 AM -0700 4/25/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>My feeling has always been that "GFY" underlies "GCY," but there is
>an understandable lack of early written records.
>
>Indeed, I've always felt that "Go fuck yourself" may have developed
>from "Go frig yourself," since that, in the older sense of "frig,"
>is at least is physiologically possible.
>
>JL

Another possibility, though this is purely speculative, is that "go
fuck yourself" is a syntactic reworking of "(go) get (yourself)
fucked", as in the French "va (te) faire foutre" with the same
meaning and force.  I realize that there's also "fuck you" to deal
with, but I could imagine a shift resulting in the non-reflexive
meaning (where fucker =/= fuckee) taking on an apparently reflexive
form.  Somehow the idea that "go fuck yourself" derives from "go frig
yourself" just seems to go against the usual flow of traffic on this
road.

L

>
>James C Stalker <stalker at MSU.EDU> wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: James C Stalker
>Subject: Re: ? ? ? keep a cow
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Further thought. Perhaps the base form is "go fuck yourself." By
>extension, "go fuck a cow," which I'm sure your dad would never have said or
>even have thought of, so the "go + (do) + absurd action" is a euphemistic
>substitute. Opens up lots of creative options. Maybe?