Finally!

Tue Sep 25 14:20:27 UTC 2007

Agreed. If I "fuck over [personal pronoun]," I'm talking about where
I am physically located whilst fucking.

Interestingly, why *does* the pronoun frak it to gorram hell?
S.

On Sep 25, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Dennis Preston wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Finally!
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> I am a 'fuck over' speaker since the mid to late 1940's (which does
> not at all challenge its perhaps earlier greater frequency in the
> AfrAmer community). But if I had been in Wlson's barracks, I would
> not have freaked.
>
> I do not accept "fuck over him" any more than I would accept "looked
> over him" (for eyeball, investigate, assess). "Fuck over N" or "fuck
> N over" are both OK by me; It's the pronoun that fucks up it.
>
> dInIs
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Finally!
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> What Jon said.
>>
>> As for my claim that there's a relationship to race, "fuck over" has
>> been a BE street (and, in some households, a home) colloquialism that
>> I've been familiar with since the beginning of time. But this, in my
>> experience, is not the case among white speakers. As an example the
>> racial bit, in 1960, I once used the term in the barracks at the Army
>> Language School. I asked, "Have you guys heard about the way that the
>> First shirt fucked over Lupow?" And my barracks-mates, all of whom
>> were white (during the time that I was at the Language School, among
>> approximately 400 students in the Russian Division, there were only
>> two black GI"s: your humble correspondent and a WAC with a big butt),
>> freaked. Not a single one had ever heard the phrase, "fuck over,"
>> before. I was stunned, since I know it like I know my own name.
>> Naturally, they thought that it was really cool and wanted to learn
>> it. (I had to teach some people that you say "FUCK over" and not
>> "fuck
>> OVER"). I first heard the expression, "fuck someone over" ca.1970
>> and,
>> from that time to the present, I've never heard it used by blacks
>> under any circumstances, despite any literary evidence to the
>> contrary, possibly because I've never been a fan of Louis Armstrong,
>> etc., not to mention that no such record would ever have been played
>> on the radio and it's doubtful that it would have been sold in any
>> black record shop, back in the day, any more than a black store or
>> shop would have sold pornography. Till at least the 'Seventies, the
>> most erotic material freely available in black-operated stores was
>> Playboy, Jet magazine, and the Jet girlie calendar. I went to grade
>> school with Lamont McLemore, Jet's longtime girlie photographer -
>> since ca.1950 - and also a member of the Fifth Dimension, the
>> formerly
>> well-known Saint Louis singing group. He was a Renaissance man, I
>> reckon. It must have been a hard life, since Lamont, though he was
>> younger than I am, died several years ago.
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>> As for the syntax, saying "He fucked over me," etc., sounds
>> completely
>> natural to me. OTOH, "He fucked me over"
>>
>>
>> On 9/24/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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>>> -----------------------
>>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>  Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>>>  Subject:      Re: Finally!
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -----------
>>>
>>>  Though skin pigmentation is irrelevant per se, HDAS suggests (and
>>> I believe) that "to fuck over X"
>>>
>>>    a. was indeed the original form in the sense in question,
>>>
>>>    b. has been vastly more prevalent among speakers of AAVE - so
>>> much so as to sugget the idiom's origin there,
>>>
>>>    c. was not much used in white speech before the mid '70s,
>>>
>>>    d. still sounds rhythmically or positionally "wrong" to me as a
>>> speaker of WAVE.
>>>
>>>    Earliest HDAS ex. is from 1961, but the context suggests it was
>>> around for a while.
>>>
>>>    The form "fuck X over" undoubtedly owes something to "work X
>>> over."  I believe this is becoming the general form.
>>>
>>>    JL
>>>
>>>
>>>    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>>    ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>  Poster: Wilson Gray
>>>  Subject: Finally!
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -----------
>>>
>>>  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
>>>
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>>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>
>
> --
> Dennis R. Preston
> University Distinguished Professor
> Department of English
> Morrill Hall 15-C
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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