F******

[Garson O'Toole]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: F******
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 11/8/2009 12:01 PM, Sam Clements wrote:
>>I assume your question is rhetorical?  They surely were just covering their
>>ass after the fact.
>
> Shouldn't that have been "a**"?  :-)
>
> And The Grand Island Independent wrote:  "a reaction to strobe lights
> should have included the word "freaking." The word was replaced with
> asterisks ...".
>
> Not by my count -- The Grand Island Independent's article contains 6
> asterisks, just right for F****** but one too few for "Freaking", or
> for that matter for "Frigging".  There is an honorable tradition:  in
> the 18th century, the number of asterisks very often corresponded to
> the number of letters omitted from a personal name (in the attempt to
> avoid libeling someone).
>
> Joel

Norman Mailer used the word fug as an ersatz crudity in "The Naked and
the Dead". The result was timeless:

Aaah, fug the whole goddam mess. If they can't feed a man, then fug
'em, fug 'em all. He was trembling so badly he had to sit down and
rest.

In this case, fugging has the correct number of letters to match the asterisks.

Garson

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