Finally!

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Mon Sep 24 05:16:06 UTC 2007


The correct usage has appeared in print! From Slashdot:

"... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck over_ other
corporations who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..."

Lest the point be missed, for those of us old enough (and/or black enough?),

"... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck_ other corporations
_over_ who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..." is
ungrammatical.

That is, [fuck NP over] is absolutely *not* a viable or a grammatical
alternative to [fuck over NP]. Unless, of course, you speak a
different dialect.

There are 215,000 raw Google hits that include uses such as "get the
fuck over it." So, sorting out the various usages would take ten men
and a boy. But the Urban Dictionary, at least, has it right. Well,
sort of. The second definition defines _fuck over_ as a Briticism
meaning "fuck over," with examples ambiguous as to dialect. And either
UD doesn't have "fuck NP over" (unlikely?) or I don't know how to find
it (likely?).

-Wilson

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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