fock, 1956

[Jonathan Lighter]

Claimed by British travel writer Eric Newby:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/721690/Eric-Newby-At-the-frontiers-of-the-language.html
 :

"AT first glance, it would be hard to think of a less likely corrupter of
the nation's morals than Eric Newby. The veteran travel writer is sitting
on an elegant antique sofa, soberly dressed and freshly shaved, when he
suddenly confesses to his crime: the author of A Short Walk in the Hindu
Kush, Slowly Down the Ganges and Love and War in the Apennines, and the
holder of the Military Cross and Commander of the Order of the British
Empire was, he says, the first person to use the word 'fock' in a book.

"'It was very important I did so,' says Newby innocently. His successful
evasion of the censor's blue pencil came in 1956 in The Last Grain Race,
his magisterial account of life aboard an ailing Finnish ship just before
the Second World War. 'The crew was always saying "F**k this, f**k that"
and I needed this material because it made the book more interesting. So
what I did was that when the word first appeared as "fock", I put an
asterisk explaining that "'fock' is the Swedish word for foresail". After
that, each "fock" was like a running joke.'"


N.B. the implication that one now corrupts national morals by devising
euphemisms.


JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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