[Ads-l] TF

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Jesse has an entry in "The F-Word" (Fourth Edition) for the
interjection WTF which lists a 1974 citation for WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
and a 1979 citation for WTF. Perhaps TF emerged in the 1970s.

I searched for the phrase "who TF" in the Google Usenet archive as a
preliminary probe and found a 1986 citation. There is plenty of room
for antedating.

Usenet Newsgroup: net.lang.c
Subject: Who T.F. Cares?
Timestamp: Mar 3, 1986, 11:18:45 AM
Poster: JAMES COTTRELL
https://groups.google.com/g/net.lang.c/c/aaCp5PnSJNI/m/-XuhuW3pnZoJ

[Begin excerpt]
Who T.F. Cares? I gotta be me! Go suck eggs.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Fri, Oct 3, 2025 at 1:05 PM Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
>
> And writing as well....
>
> I've been tracking _TF_ for a couple of years. I would have put it into ed. 4, but I couldn't get around to aggressively searching for it, so I left it out. I used it in a recent conference paper as a specific example of something that was hard to research.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
>
> On Fri, Oct 03, 2025 at 12:50:32PM -0400, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > 'WTF.'
> >
> > 2025 Quora.com:  You know what, I will actually push back on that BS. TF
> > are you talking about?
> >
> > The "what" is often dropped in speech.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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