Saturday, August 22, 2009

BFD

Get that smirk off your face, kid; this is serious etymology.

Jesse Sheidlower, the formidable Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary, now favors us with a third, much expanded edition of The F Word (Oxford University Press, 270 pages, $16.95), a thoroughgoing exploration of the most celebrated verb/noun/adjective/adverb/interjection/infix* in English, with ample citations of its use over the past five and a half centuries.

Here we have a point of some delicacy. Anyone who has sat within earshot of me near deadline can stipulate that I am without reticence in employing this flexible word in various permutations. At the same time, while blogging at The Sun and here I have maintained a reasonably decorous tone. (I once published an article in The Sun on swearing — highly favorable toward the practice — without employing any term more unsavory than the damme of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pinafore.) I can’t quite bring myself to cut loose here. Bear with me.

I can at least correct a common error. The word is not of Anglo-Saxon origin; it has not been discovered anywhere in Old English or, for that matter, Middle English. It appears to have emerged in English sometime in the 15th century, adapted from Low German, Flemish, or Dutch. One reason for the murkiness is that etymologists until quite recently had to rely on written sources; but words often emerge in speech before they appear in writing, and, beyond that, there are taboos against writing down objectionable words such as our subject. So what the lexicographer calls attestations may be sparse.

But Mr. Sheidlower has ferreted out many sources, from a manuscript poem of 1450-1475 attacking the Carmelite Friars of Ely to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show in February of this year. A man of stamina, he has evidently, in the course of his researches, read an astonishing amount of Victorian pornography. This revised edition goes well beyond his previous findings in American and British (English, Scottish, Welsh) profanity to include sources from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and beyond. I challenge you to find an expression that he has omitted. (If you do, send it to him.)

Serious students of the language will find this book invaluable, particularly in the citations, which amount to a social history of the English-speaking peoples from a limited but intense perspective.



*An infix is a syllable (affix) or word (tmesis) inserted in the middle of another word or phrase, such as Homer Simpson’s saxamaphone. Often as an expletive, e.g., guaran-damn-tee.



8 comments:

  1. Thanks for a great article on one of my favorite words. I even discussed the use and meaning of the word when I was teaching freshman college English comp classes. I think that discussion may have been the most enjoyed discussion of the semester.

    Now, as a proofreader, I've been know to utter the word from time-to-time. I will definitely have to buy the book.

    Thanks!
    Cassie Armstrong
    Proofreader
    MorningStar Editing: Cleaning up the verbal spill
    www.morningstarediting.com

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  2. As I understand it, the word comes from the old Dutch "fukken," which means to slap, beat, or bang. Very little evolution was needed or occured.

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  3. Mr. Sheidlower lists Middle Dutch fokken, "to thrust," "to copulate"; Norwegian fukka; Swedish focka; German ficken. He adds, "There is no way to know for sure which language is the ultimate source."

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  4. All this scholarly discussion reminds me of the old story about the man, visiting Boston for the first time, who asks a cabdrive "Where can I get scrod?" The cabdriver answers "I've been asked that question many times before, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive." Must have been an out-of-work copy editor to know language that well.

    Retired in Elkridge

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  5. To be fair, the sort of material that survives from OE and ME days wouldn't be likely to include such a low-class word.

    The (female) c-word is also not Old English, and may be from Latin ultimately, filtered through one or another Germanic language. The p-word is a straight borrowing from Old French. The rest of the Anglo-Saxon expletives, however, are indeed Anglo-Saxon, except for the ending -er in some of them, which is ultimately of French and Latin origin, though now applied to many native words as well.

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  6. Perhaps George Carlin says it best.
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=fFmRypAz_E

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  7. I doubt he consulted Sources from the Welsh. No one, but no one, reads Welsh save the Welsh. And who in the name of sanity would want to? Talk about your arcane languages.......

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  8. I don't get it.

    Not one mention of the Baltimore Fire Department.

    What's up with that?

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