shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Sun Sep 5 15:36:50 UTC 2010


Indeed,in  my post that set off the S&F chain reaction a couple of days ago, I quoted the 18th C citations in the OED for "fuck" as a verb:
"For "fuck", verb, the OED's string of citations includes:
a1749 A. ROBERTSON Poems (?1751) 256 But she gave Proof that she could fk. 1784 PRINCE WILLIAM Let. 23 July in P. Ziegler King William IV (1971) iii. 51 Oh, for..the pretty girls of Westminster..such as would not clap or pox me every time I fucked. a1796 R. BURNS Merry Muses (1911) 71 You can fk where'er you please."

So the ones from a1749 and a 1796 both actually read f--k.   (Somehow the dashes disappeared when I cut and pasted from OED to my email).
I suppose if it is obvious what the word must be, it will be accepted.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
Date: Sunday, September 5, 2010 7:18 am
Subject: Re: shit! (coarse exclamation of annoyance or disgust)
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> On Sat, Sep 04, 2010 at 09:22:45PM -0400, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > At 9/4/2010 06:29 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >> Wow!
> >
> > Undsoubtedly shit, but does a "s--t" qualify for the OED and the HDAS?
>
> Yes.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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