mofo

[Wilson Gray]

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Clai Rice <cxr1086 at LOUISIANA.EDU>
>Subject:      mofo
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>
>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


I've heard it pronounced as "mofo" only by white people. I've always
used "muthuhfuckuh," myself. "Muh-fuh," in my experience, is used
only as a joking, hyper-BE pseudo-euphemism. Of course, given that,
as a board-certified senior citizen and, hence, old-school, things
may no longer be as I remember them.

-Wilson Gray