(Reinstated) Earliest Version of "Motherf*cker / Motherf*cking"

[Joel S. Berson]

Not so curious -- just another long S confusion.  Think "The Vicar of Dibley".

Joel

At 3/25/2013 11:01 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>(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 have now found an earlier 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)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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