Gorram and Frack

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:07:42 -0600, Jim Parish <jparish at SIUE.EDU> wrote:

>Mark A. Mandel lists several more examples of invented expletives in
>SF. I would add:
>
>from Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_ (1951), "frab" (as in "frab
>joint") and "slok" (as in "pile of slok");
>
>and from the TV series "Farscape", a number of epithets including
>"frell" (n. and v.: "what the frell", "this is a frelling mess"), "dren"
>(again, "pile of..."), and "tralk" (roughly meaning "slut"). (I'm sure
>there are more from that series that I'm forgetting.)

A belated followup to this thread... I recently came across this list on
Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_curse_words>.

Most of the examples mentioned thus far are included on the list, plus
many more from "joojooflop" to "shpadoinkle".


--Ben Zimmer