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

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 10:31:42AM -0400, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Despite Thomas Lowry's later scholarly misdeed, I see no serious reason to
> discount the "1865-66" ex. of "motherf*cking" that I posted on Dec. 3,
> 2009.

I now do.

Having looked this up in Lowry, I remember what the problem was. In this
section, Lowry is quoting a National Archives archivist who tells Lowry
about his first day on the job, in 1967, when he opened up a file and
read a letter containing the expression "mother fucking son of a bitch".
But that's it. The footnote cites only "Personal communication," i.e.
with the archvist.

It may well be true, but there doesn't seem to be any way to track this
down. And however conservative the OED's bibliographic principles may
be, I'm sure that most of you will agree that we can't assign a date of
"1865" to a quote whose source is an archivist saying that 40 years
before he saw a letter somewhere with that quote in it.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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