mofo

[Jonathan Lighter]

On my first day in Tennessee, I went into a Krystal near campus for some fast food.  The first utterance I heard spoken by a very middle-aged white Tennessean was " [ 'kE:p yI ] ? "

After a repetition or two I eventually discovered this meant "Can I help you?"

A week or so ago I was being thwarted once again by the automatic checkout machine at the supermarket.  A young black employee approached me and clearly inquired
" [ dI 'mEz @ ] ?"

After a repetition or two I eventually discovered this meant "Did it mess up?"

So "muh-fuh" must be out there.  I haven't heard it, but I have heard  [ 'm@:
 f@ k@ ] , with reduction to the vanishing point of the secoind syllable.

I've heard "mofo" from white guys only, all of them roughly my age, i.e., young enough to have been influenced by the late Hunter S. Thompson, but old enough to be offered gratuitous senior discounts at places like Krystal.

JL


Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: mofo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Clai Rice
>Subject: mofo
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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

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