The F-Word (22 page)

Read The F-Word Online

Authors: Jesse Sheidlower

b
. as a mass noun: copulation.

ca
1675
in R. Thompson
Unfit for Modest Ears
49: If guifted Men before now sweare and Rant/(Then surely I for Fuck may Cant).
1687
Last Night’s
Ramble
in G. Williams
Dict. Sexual Language & Imagery in Shakespearean & Stuart Literature
(1994) I. 563: Half Ten Guineas spent in wine and F—k.
1689
Satire on Benting
in G. Williams
Dict. Sexual Language & Imagery in Shakespearean & Stuart Literature
(1994) I. 563: She wanted fuck in her old age.
a
1720
in T. D’Urfey
Pills
VI 266: She’d dance and she’d caper as wild as a Buck,/And told
Tom
the
Tinker,
she would have some —.
1860
in M. E. Neely
Lincoln Encyclopedia
(1984) 155: When Douglas found his chances were scarcely worth a shuck/He bade his Delegates, go home, to take a little fu—.
1889
Capt. C. Devereaux
Venus in India
37: He added his initials and “WTBF?” “What does it mean?” I asked. “‘Will there be fuck?’ of course.”
1918
in M. B. Carey
Mlle. from Armentières
II (unpaged): The S.O.S. was sure out of luck,/They stayed behind and got all the —.
1938
H. Miller
Tropic of Capricorn
104: The place is just plastered with cunt and fuck.

c
. a person considered as a sexual partner. Chiefly with a modifying word.

1870
Cythera’s Hymnal
75: A young woman got married at Chester,/Her mother she kissed and she blessed her./Says she, “You’re in luck,/He’s a stunning good fuck,/For I’ve had him myself down in Leicester.”
1874
Letter from Friend in Paris
II. 168: I had always held that dear momma was the best fuck in the family, and in every way a most desirable and splendid creature.
ca
1890
My Secret Life
II. iii. 57: Is she a good fuck? Where does she live?
ca
1927
in P. Smith
Letters from Father
141: What a fuck she was.
1934
“J.M. Hall”
Anecdota Americana
(Second series) 27: You are a much better fuck than your old mammy here.
1938
“Justinian”
Americana Sexualis
23: She’d make a good fuck!
1963–64
K. Kesey
Sometimes a Great Notion
193: A cigar is just a cigar, but a good woman is a fuck.
1969
M. Lynch
American Soldier
163: She was a good fuck. She did everything I told her.
1972
B. Rodgers
Queens’ Vernacular
87: Was Tyrone a good fuck?
1977
N. Wexler
Saturday Night Fever
(film): If you’re as good in bed as you are on the dance floor, I bet you’re one lousy fuck.
1977
A. Patrick
Beyond Law
57: One o’ the nicest little gals and sweetest little fucks a man could ask for.
1979
O. Clark
Diary
(May 10) in H. Rous
Ossie Clark Diaries
(1998) 84: Angie stayed in Marianne’s bed—she is a junkie who was in Jimi Hendrix’s dressing room so long ago. “She’s a wonderful fuck,” said Marianne the following day.
1983
J. Groen & D. Groen
Huey
122: She’s sure a wild fuck.
1984
“Pickles”
Queens
34: Perhaps the commonest threat to success is the arrival of friends or former fucks.
1992
J. Eszterhas
Basic Instinct
(film script): I think she’s the fuck of the century, don’t you?
1993
B. Moore
Lexicon of Cadet Language
151:
Fuck
…a girlfriend.… “Are you off with the fuck tonight?”
2000
E. L. Harris
Not a Day Goes By
212: “He is the best fuck I’ve ever had.” “You slept with him?” “There was no sleeping going on.”
2008
A. Guthrie
Savage Night
14: She was a great fuck, but she wasn’t worth dying for.

2
.
a
. the least bit; a damn.—usually used in phrases like
not give a fuck
or
not care a fuck
. [The
ca
1790 quotation, from a satirical poem (“The Discontented Student”), concerns a young man who cannot make love to his wife at night because he is preoccupied with his books, yet conversely cannot concentrate on his studies during the day. Sense seems to demand that the excised phrase in its final line be “a fuck”; no other word is correspondingly vulgar, and only
fuck
makes the pun work.]

ca
1790
St. G. Tucker in
Poems
(1977) 144: Our scholar every night/Thinks of his books; and of his bride by light.… /“My wife—a plague!—keeps running in my head/In ev’ry page I read[,] my raging fires/Portray her yielding to my fierce desires.”/“G—d—your books!” the testy father said,/“I’d not give —for all you’ve read.”
1879
Harlequin Prince Cherrytop
19: For all your threats I don’t care a fuck./I’ll never leave my princely darling duck.
1917
in E. Wilson
Prelude
184: An English soldier on the boat: “I down’t give a fuck if the bowt goes dahn, it doesn’t belong to me!”
1926
F. Wray trans. H. Barbusse
Under Fire
283: He doesn’t care a f—for us.
1929
F. Manning
Middle Parts of Fortune
48 [refers to WWI]: They don’t care a fuck ’ow us’ns live.
1931
J. Dos Passos
Nineteen Nineteen
200 [refers to 1919]: The bosun said it was the end of civilization and the cook said he didn’t give a f—k.
1934
H. Miller
Tropic of Cancer
22: Nobody gives a fuck about her except to use her.
1935
T. Wolfe
Death to Morning
74 [refers to 1917]: I don’t give a f— what ya t’ought.
1936
in P. Oliver
Blues Tradition
246: When I first met you I thought I fell in good luck,/Now I know you ain’t worth a —.
1946
in J. Jones
Reach
61: It dont mean a
fuck
to me.
1960
G. Sire
Deathmakers
44: They don’t give a fuck about you.
1965
B. D. Reeves
Night Action
86: It mattered not a fuck.
1969
N.Y.C. man, age
ca
30: Doesn’t that pull on your heartstrings? Or
don’t you give a rusty fuck?
1969–71
R. Kahn
Boys of Summer
107: Rocco’s a helluva man, but that don’t mean a fuck.
1974
R. Carter
16th Round
53: What makes you think that I give a fuck about you—or the horse you came to town on?
1972–76
C. Durden
No Bugles, No Drums
9: Nobody gives two fucks.
1977
Dowd
Slap Shot
(film): It don’t make a fuck’s bit of difference.
1979
D. Thoreau
City at Bay
36: Who gives a rusty fuck about some wino?
1995
New York Review of Books
(June 8) 48: Education nowadays isn’t worth a tup-ney fuck.
1998
J. Lahr in
New Yorker
(Sept. 7) 80: The actor doesn’t care a fuck about Shakespeare. The director doesn’t care a fuck about Shakespeare. He never really encounters Shakespeare.
2005
A. Smith
Accidental
26: Why should I care about him when he clearly doesn’t give a fuck about me.

b
. anything whatsoever.—used in negative.

1970
D. Crosby in
Rolling Stone
(July 23) 27/2: The Byrds would come there and be a mechanical windup doll. They didn’t play fuck.
1971
National Lampoon
(Dec.) 58: That croaker don’t know fuck.

c
. (used with
like, as,
or
than
as an emphatic standard of comparison).—also used with
a
.

1938
in G. Legman
Limerick
(1954) 393: The colloquial comparative, “hotter than a Persian fuck.”
1969
T. Raworth
Serial Biography
66: Burned like fuck he said. Had to smear ointment all over it.
1976
C.R. Anderson
Grunts
61 [refers to 1969]: To them it was still hotter than fuck and rising.
1978
in T. O’Brien
Things They Carried
171: I’m sure as fuck not
going
anywhere.
1980
S. Whalen
It Takes a Man to Cry
272: “You in pain, man?”… “It stings like a fuck.”
1983
M. Thickett
Outrageously Offensive Jokes
60: It’s raining like a fuck outside.
1980–86
in D. J. Steffensmeier
Fence
5: You sure as fuck don’t go around telling people: I’m a fence!
1988
“N.W.A.”
Fuck tha Police
(rap song): I’m sneaky as fuck when it comes to crime.
1988
P. Duncan
84 Charlie MoPic
(film): He’s gonna slow us down like
fuck,
man!
a
1989
in J. Kisseloff
You Must Remember This
72: It was no good, that’s all, and you suffer like a fuck.
1991
in
RapPages
(Feb. 1992) 67: Lawnge’s production is dope as fuck.
1993
J. Watson & K. Dockery
Point Man
105: Raining like a fuck out, ain’t it?
1996
D. McCumber
Playing off Rail
336: I sure as fuck hope so.
2002
J. Goad in
N.Y. Press
(Dec. 25) 28/1: I sure as fuck couldn’t feel sorry for girls who earned in a five-hour shift what I made in a week.

d
. a bit of difference.—used in negative.

1984
A. R. Sample
Racehoss
198 [refers to 1950s]: It don’t make a fuck who it is.

3
. semen (
rare
); in phrase:
full of fuck,
full of sexual desire or (
broadly
) energy. Compare
BULL FUCK
.

1680
School of Venus
in B. K. Mudge
When Flesh Becomes Word
(2004) 40: We were both of us so full of Fuck, that we did not let slip the least minute that was favorable to us; nay more; we sometimes did it in fear and had the ill luck to be disturbed and forced to give over our sport without spending, if it proved a false alarm we went at it again.
ca
1866
Romance of Lust
390: The cunt full of fuck only excited him the more.
a
1890–93
J. S. Farmer & W. E. Henley
Slang & Its Analogues
III 80:
Fuck,
subs.… The seminal fluid.
Ibid.
85:
Like a straw-yard bull, full of fuck and half-starved
.… A friendly retort to the question, “How goes it?”
i.e.,
“How are you?”
1916
H. N. Cary
Slang of Venery
I 98:
Full of fuck
.—Ready to work.
1938
“Justinian”
Americana Sexualis
23:
Full of fuck,
amorously potent.
1966
A. Wainhouse & R. Seaver trans. de Sade
120 Days of Sodom
494: She would raise her skirts, display her ass, and the libertine, all smiles, would spray his fuck upon it. [
1978
“F. Pulsing”
Whipped Cream
16: The combination drew the fuck-load from Ed’s shaking loins. He moaned and blasted.
Ibid.
59: He gushed his fuck-load into the fink’s writhing mouth.]
1993
Farmer’s Step-daughter,
on Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.stories: She had thought often about what it would be like to let [him] shoot a full load of his fuck into her face.
Ibid.
: She felt the warm fuck filling her mouth, coating her tongue and draining back toward her throat.
2003
J. Woodward
Mister Goodbye Easter Island
42: I want my Redi-Serv Jesus with his eyes on fire, all fierce and full of fuck.
2006
P. May
Spring & His Summers
39: They could have been having a huge orgy up there. They certainly looked like they were full of fuck and energy.

4
. a despicable person, usually a man.

[
1788
S. Low
Politician Out-Witted
I ii: Do you call me a foutre, you rascal?]
1927
[J. Fliesler]
Anecdota Americana
188: I won’t sye nothin’ nawsty, all I sye is my bloody arse ’ole to you, you bloomin’ fuck.
1927
E. Wilson in
Twenties
399: You oughtn’ta be a prizefighter, yuh fuck—yuh ought to be a bootblack!
1933
C. H. Ford & P. Tyler
Young & Evil
40: Take that
fuck McAllen.
1934
H. Roth
Call It Sleep
414 [refers to
ca
1910]: Yer an at’eist, yuh fuck, he hollers.
1942
in S. J. Perelman
Don’t Tread on Me
46: I was that superior fuck who smiled patronizingly and observed…“Recent statistics show that the French have the greatest land army in the world.”
1946–50
J. Jones
From Here to Eternity
ch. xxxvi: I told you, you dumb fuck.
1958
T. Berger
Crazy in Berlin
136: Go on, you fuck, or I’ll take ya apart.
1964
H.S. Thompson
Letter
(Nov. 25) in
Proud Highway
(1997) 473: All these fucks who smile on the TV screen.
1967
J. Hersey
Algiers Motel Incident
134: Them fucks took my tape recorder.
1968
J.P. Miller
The Race for Home
294 [refers to 1930s]: “He said he don’t, you dumb fuck,” Dawg said.
1970
R. Byrne
Memories non-Jewish Childhood
117: Come in off of there, you dumb fuck.
1972
B. Harrison
Hospital
50: I swear I thought that fuck was going to offer me a bribe to save Tessa’s life.
1973
A. Schiano & A. Burton
Solo
80: He’s the meanest fuck in town.
1973
P. Benchley
Jaws
191: You lying fuck!
1987
Santiago
Undercover
63: Don’t bother with this fuck.
1991
“Who Am I?” in L.A. Stanley
Rap
383: He was a big-ass fuck.
1997
W. Allen
Deconstructing Harry
(film): You fucked-up fuck!…Fuck you!
2006
R. Flanagan
Unknown Terrorist
172: Standing there, throwing herself on the mercy of a miserable fuck like Moretti, she realised this was madness.

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