Second Earliest Version of "Motherf*cker / Motherf*cking"

[Shapiro, Fred]

(I use * in this message to try to avoid its being blocked by people's e-mail systems.)

The earliest version of "motherf*cker" or "motherf*cking" in OED is from an 1889 Texas judicial opinion, contributed by me (if you look at my Wikipedia biography, you would think this kind of thing is the main focus of my researches).  I apologize for forgetting, in my previous e-mail, that Jonathan Lighter had pointed out a very important 1865-66 citation for "mother f*cking" in 2009.

I have now found the second earliest (as far as I know) known citation, again from those colorful late-19th-century Texas courts:

1888 _Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Court of Appeals of Texas_ XXV. 435  Ridge passed on up the street, and Crisman again remarked that whoever fired that shot at him was a "mammy f-----g son of a bitch."

Curiously, the following citation appears two pages later:

1888 _Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Court of Appeals of Texas_ XXV. 437  He heard Crisman say, and repeat, two or three times, that "Whoever he is, he is a God d----d mammy sucking son of a bitch."

Fred Shapiro
Editor
YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)

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