fvck

[Wilson Gray]

Well, if you capitalized it - FVCK - you could force-transliterate it
back into English as "FUSK." Otherwise, I'd have to say that
russifying it is hopeless. 'Course, it *is* translatable into a
Russian word that yields about the same degree of obscenity. I don't
really know, though. I had a Russian female colleague, at one time,
Alla. She didn't strike me as being _nekul'turnaia_, but I didn't get
the impression that former
for-men-only-and-not-for-the-shell-like-ears-of-a-lady words in either
Russian or English upset her in any way.

Of course, even here in The World, lots of women, irregardless ;-) of
class, not only *hear* language of a type that *no* girl or woman that
I knew, back in the day would ever have heard, but they also use it.

Naturally, no serious conclusion can be drawn from a single case.

-Wilson

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 3:55 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: fvck
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 9/11/2009 03:20 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>
>>Is there a term for a euphemism that exists only in writing? This isn't like
>>"urinate" for "piss", or for that matter "the F-word" for "'fuck'"; but
>>neither is it a partial or total redaction like "f***" or "What the !%#@?"
>
> What -- you can't pronounce "fv"?  Let's ask a Russian linguist.  Wilson?
>
>
>>m a m
>>
>>On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
>>Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>>
>> > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>> > Caveats: NONE
>> >
>> > Probably too late for the new edition of Jesse's "The F Word", but . . .
>> >
>> > I just read somewhere that "fvck" is a common euphemism for "fuck" at
>> > MIT, likely resulting from the Latinate spelling on the neoclassical
>> > buildings.
>
> I think not Latinate, but stonecarver's and colonial Massachusetts' printer's.
>
> Joel
>
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--
-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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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