mofo

[Clai Rice]

I'm wondering about the word mofo, specifically about the pronunciation.
I've always pronounced both vowels as long o (rhymes with "go"), but
secretly suspected that this pronunciation was some kind of cleaned up,
white man's version of the term. I've certainly never pronounced the
source term this way when actually cursing or being cool. OED (and
RHDAS) gives Thompson's 1967 _Hell's Angels_ as the first use, "the Mofo
Club", but the second citation is "1970 R. D. ABRAHAMS Positively Black
vi. 154 Soul is walkin' down the street in a way that says, 'This is me,
muh-fuh!'". This indicates to me that orthographic mofo might be a
spelling of "muh-fuh". Is the pronunciation of mofo with long o a
spelling pronunciation?

Clai Rice