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[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jul 23, 2010, at 5:26 AM, Mark Mandel wrote:

> I have consistenly used "rat fuck!" as an expletive of extreme irritation
> since, I believe, the middle 1960s.
>
> m a m
>
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:15 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Jul 22, 2010, at 5:18 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>>>
>>> "Ratfucking" goes back to at least the early '60s, as HDAS may someday
>> show.
>>> It entered politics in the era of CREEP.
>>
>> Jesse Sheidlower's _The F Word_ has an excellent series of entries on the
>> "rat-fuck" lexical sphere, including entries on the noun (in several
>> senses), "rat-fuck" the transitive verb (in several senses, including 'to
>> outwit; trick' from AmSp in 1964 on, with specifically political uses at the
>> end of the subentry), and "rat-fucking" the noun 'destructive activity,
>> pranks' (with relevant cites from 1944 and then from 1972 on -- due to
>> Donald Segretti, probably -- as specialized to political dirty tricks).

i wasn't claiming to be giving all the uses of "rat-fuck" in Sheidlower, only discussing the ones that seemed most relevant to the ADS-L discussions, and then only very briefly; look at Sheidlower for the details.

many of the uses seem to start from established uses of "fuck", affectively extended by "rat", but there are many complex sense developments, which need to be tracked.

one entry i didn't mention is for the *interjection* "rat-fuck" ("= FUCK _verb_ definition 1.d."). Sheidlower has it only from 1996, so if you can find an actual citation from the 60s, that would be a considerable antedating.

i recall the noun "rat-fuck" from the 60s, as both a term of abuse applied to a person ("he's a stupid rat-fuck") and a reference to "a confused or bungled situation". ("what a rat-fuck the whole thing was!").  but then recollections are fragile and undependable.

along those lines, i *think* i recall the noun used in the negative polarity item "give/care/etc. a rat-fuck" -- i.e., "not give/care/etc. a rat-fuck" 'not give/care/etc. a damn' -- from the early 60s (from my college years).  Sheidlower's first cite for this sense is from 1971, but it's in a dictionary, suggesting earlier use, which would make 60s occurrences not implausible.

but then maybe i'm not understanding what gets covered by "expletive" for you -- or indeed what the  intent of your comment was.

arnold, bowing out of this now; if you want to pursue it, talk to Jesse

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