fvck (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Fug, no. Frig, yes.

JL

On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 12:30 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: fvck (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> FWIW, the paperback version that I read and re-read had "frig." 'Twas,
> as my late father used to say (oddly, the anachronicity of this didn't
> strike till I was in my 60's; I just thought, Well, he means
> ['It.w at z]) the first time that I'd ever come across this word. Does it
> exist outside of literature? No, I mean it. I'm really asking. Has
> anyone else either heard it in the wild or, perhaps, even used it
> himself?
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com>
> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: fvck (UNCLASSIFIED)
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 08:18:46PM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >> At 3:43 PM -0400 9/11/09, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 02:12:47PM -0500, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC 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'm not sure I would include this. My tendency was not to
> >>> include things that were purely written euphemisms,
> >>> with a few
> >>> exceptions (I added an entry for _fug_, though only
> >>> cross-referencing to _fuck_;
> >>
> >> Can't recall if you have a note on the famous story about how Norman
> >> Mailer was forced by his publishers to replace "fuck" with "fug"
> >> throughout _The Naked and the Dead_ (1948) and was later introduced
> >> to Tallulah Bankhead who supposedly greeted him by loudly asserting
> >> "Oh, you're the young man who doesn't know how to spell 'fuck'."
> >
> > Yes, I mention this in the intro. In some versions it's
> > Dorothy Parker.
> >
> >>>  and I added an entry for _give a
> >>> XXXX_ (after a British beer advertisement) because it struck
> >>> me as being a different "word").
> >>>
> >>> But I don't have separate entries for other things that are
> >>> just graphical variations, whether for purposes of humor
> >>> ("fvck"), euphemism ("f--k"), or pronunciation ("fookin'").
> >>
> >> Frank McCourt in _Angela's Ashes_ has his family members refer to
> >> "feckin" this and "feckin" that, which I assume represents the
> >> Hibernian pronunciation and isn't exactly a euphemism.
> >
> > No, it is Irish but it's used there as a euphemism for _fuck_,
> > it's not just a reflection of the pronunciation. So I've added
> > it as a new entry to this edition. (OED also regards it as a
> > separate entry.)  The earliest example I have is 1980; it was
> > popularized on _Father Ted,_ the TV series.
> >
> > Jesse Sheidlower
> > OED
> >
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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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