Authors: Jesse Sheidlower
fuck with
verb
to trifle, toy, meddle, or interfere; fool; play; (
hence
) to harass, tease, or provoke; mess. [Both Chandler quotations are euphemistic; compare
FUCK AROUND
, definition 2 and
FRIG
,
verb
, definition 3.]
1938
R. Chandler
Big Sleep
ch. 26: Don’t fuss with me, little man.
1940
R. Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely
5: I’m feelin’ good…I wouldn’t want anybody to fuss with me.
1946
in T. Shibutani
Derelicts of Company K
391: The Boochies won’t fuck with him because they don’t want to catch shit.
1948
E. Hemingway in
Selected Letters
(1981) 644 [refers to
ca
1915]: I learned early to walk very dangerous so people would leave you alone; think the phrase in our part of the country was not fuck with you. Don’t fuck with me, Jack, you say in a toneless voice.
1953
M. Harris
Southpaw
239: Do Not F— With Me.
1962
J. O. Killens
Then We Heard the Thunder
221 [refers to WWII]: Why do you fuck with me so much, man? There are millions of other people in the Army.
1965
C. Brown
Manchild in the Promised Land
189: It was practically a twenty-four-hour-a-day job trying to get some money to get some stuff to keep the [heroin] habit from fucking with you.
Ibid.
: If you fuck wit that rent money, I’m gon kill you.
1968
P. Tauber
Sunshine Soldiers
169: No one fucks with chow. You eat when you’re supposed to.
1968
R. Gover
JC
100: Can’t rezist fuckin with him jes one more time.
1970
T. Thackrey
Thief
209: Took the carburetor off and soaked it in solvent and put it back on. Fiddled and fucked with it. And finally it seemed to be okay again running good.
1968–71
M. Cole & S. Black
Checking it Out
113: I…turn around and scream, “Don’t fuck with my mind!”
Ibid.
198: Stay the fuck away.… And if you think I’m fucking with you, try me.
1971
Playboy
(June) 216: I don’t like anyone fucking with my head while I’m doing [a movie].
1977
E. Bunker
Animal Factory
46: “Tony tells me you’re good at law.” “I used to fuck with it. No more.”
1977
L. Jordan
Hype
230: Them people are fuckin’ with us, man!
1981
C. Crowe
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
92: They’re just fuckin’ with us!
1990
L. Bing
Do or Die
122: ’Cause he fucked with my food…took one of my French fries.
1997
TV Guide
(May 18) 48: “Don’t f—with the Babe!” is her boldface battle cry throughout her book.
1998
New Yorker
(Mar. 16) 34: You don’t say no to the Mafia, you don’t challenge the Mafia, you generally don’t fuck with the Mafia.
2000
Z. Smith
White Teeth
ix. 232: But mainly their mission was to put the Invincible back in Indian, the Bad-aaaass back in Bengali, the P-Funk back in Pakistani. People had fucked with Rajik back in the days when he was into chess and wore V-necks.
2005
M. M. Frisby
Wifebeater
iii. 16: Do I know? You’re fucking with me right? He’s all you talk about.
2007
D. Johnson
Tree of Smoke
287: Hanson’s…finger’s on the trigger. If it comes, the enemy will feel sincerely fucked with.
fucky
noun
see under
FUCKEE
.
fucky
adjective
sexually attractive or stimulating.
1958
J. Kerouac
Letter
(Sept. 8) in
Selected Letters 1957–69
(1999) 150: There’s a girl here, J. L., rich, sexy, thin fucky who went with me to visit Lafcadio last Sat nite.
1969
A. Ginsberg
Interview
in
Spontaneous Mind: Interviews
(2001) 170: I get into a deeper emotional intimacy if the chick is lissome and springy, skinny and pretty. I like little blonde furry fucky dolls.
1973
N. Mailer
Marilyn: A Biography
102: Never again in her career will she look so sexually perfect as in 1953 making
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
no, never—if we are to examine a verb through its adverb [
sic
]—will she appear so fucky again.
1976
in G. Legman
New Limerick
461: I feel fucky.
1991
“Red Hot Chili Peppers”
If You Have to Ask
(pop. song): A little lust/To the fucky-ass Flea [
sc.,
the band’s bass player].
1994
Guardian
(London) (June 29) T8: T-shirts with slogans like
Have You Wanked Over Me Yet?
and
I’m So Fucky
.
1998
Playboy
(Dec.) 86: What was a sweet fucky marriage but the sublimation of orgies never taken?
2007
J. Sandford
Invisible Prey
105: I know you’re attracted to fucky blondes, especially the kind with small but firm breasts.
fuck-you
noun
a statement or expression of contempt, hostility, or the like. [In 1943 and 1951 quotations, referring literally to statements of the phrase
fuck you
.]
1943
G. Biddle
Journal
(July 31) in
Artist at War
(1944) 77: Teddy’s run of literary allusions is a pleasant relief after the too concentrated diet of “fuck me’s” and “fuck you’s” of the G.I.’s.
1951
J.D. Salinger
Catcher in the Rye
202: I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another “Fuck you” on the wall.
1965
H.S. Thompson
Letter
(Aug. 10) in
Proud Highway
(1997) 537: I had a bad wrangle with them on a Tom Wolfe review, and we said a mutual fuck you, with me about $500 ahead.
1976
L. Bangs in L. Bangs & J. Morthland
Mainlines, Blood Feasts, Bad Taste
(2003) 165: His entire performance, from music to personal bearing, was a giant fuck-you to everybody present.
1992
Rolling Stone
(Dec. 10) 45: The disc was a relentlessly catchy and fuzz-filled “fuck you.”
1993
Rolling Stone
(Oct. 14) 68: Who else could insult Budweiser, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Calvin Klein, the entire recording industry and MTV all in one video? “This Note’s for You” is Neil Young’s finest “fuck you.”
1994
Granta
47 (Spring) 129: She never learned English, even though she had come here at sixteen: a fuck-you to the New World.
1995
New York Magazine
(Mar. 13) 33: When it’s as bad as it can be, and people still act like there’s nothing wrong, then it’s sort of like a fuck-you to the audience—“we don’t have to be good, because we’re Saturday Night Live!”
1996
N.Y. Observer
(Apr. 1) 3: The line was a veiled fuck-you to David Letterman,…the symbolic whipping boy for how the East Coast element screwed up the Oscars.
2000
N.Y. Press
(Mar. 29) ii. 14/1: Searching for friendly faces, I get only fuck-yous.
2007
J. Picoult
Nineteen Minutes
114: She had pictured suicide as a final statement, a fuck you to the people who hadn’t understood how hard it was for her to be the Josie they wanted her to be.
fuck-you
adjective
that expresses or is characterized by a desire to insult or to demonstrate defiant indifference; provocative; contemptuous; hostile; confrontational.
[
1954
“Lars Lawrence”
Morning, Noon & Night
148: The critic’s immaculate mind had attracted him powerfully, though he rejected the utility of such refinement in a fuck-you-Jack, my-belly-first period of history.]
1962
J. Kerouac
Letter
(Apr. 4) in
Selected Letters 1957–69
(1999) 334: Funny how they look so old-fashioned now, they were written in ’54 but not everyone writes like that (with that fuckyou freedom).
1972
Rolling Stone
(July 20) 8: For clenched fists and gritted teeth and fuck-you rock and roll.
1973
Rolling Stone
(Mar. 1) 42: See if you can keep your integrity without a flat out fuck-you challenge.
1981
Times Literary Supplement
(May 15) 548: The Beatles.… A pretentious gobbledygook introduction by Leonard Bernstein: “…the Fuck-You coolness of these Four Horsemen of Our Apocalypse.”
1993
N. Maclean in
Harper’s
(Feb.) 35: Under the influence of those dreams, some of the finest
fuck-you prose in the English language has been composed but, alas, never published.
1994
Rolling Stone
(Feb. 10) 53: We’ve endured so much phony Hollywood nobility about disease that Jean’s fuck-you rampage against death comes off as horrifically honest.
1996
Newsweek
(Feb. 19) 39: The bombing…is “the politics of fuck-you rage and resentment rather than political calculation.”
1997
New Yorker
(Oct. 6) 48: Youthful hubris or fuck-you candor.
1998
New Yorker
(Dec. 1) 64: He has the real fuck-you blood.
2002
Ministry
Jan. 91/1: I’ve just got to give them respect for doing something that’s completely balls-to-the-wall and fuck-you.
2005
T. Brookes
Guitar
260: He gave me his usual fuck-you stare and set his guitar…on the stage.
2008
A. Davies
Mine All Mine
232: Pushing out of a sleeve is a chronograph the size of a biscuit. It looks like it could tell you the time, the moon phase, the weather in Tokyo, and precisely how much money you don’t have in your checking account. It’s a fuck-you watch, attached to the fat wrist that’s attached to the kill-you hand. So this is the magus who sends agents into my life to ruin me.
fuck-you lizard
noun
[suggested by a fancied resemblance between the English phrase and the gecko’s call]
Military in Southeast Asia
. a tokay gecko.
[
1934
C. L. Clifford
Too Many Boats
309: A gecko lizard in a nearby papaya tree croaked throatily. “Obscene devils, those,” he went on dryly. The colonel laughed.] [
1970
Pacific Stars & Stripes
(May 15): A 2nd Brigade chaplains’s assistant is trying to put his outdoorsman’s skills to work on a somewhat embarrassing problem at the 4th Inf. Div.’s Highlander Chapel. The nemesis in this case was the infamous Vietnamese “insulting lizard.”]
1971
Playboy
(Aug.) 199: From the underground comes the chant of “Fuck you, fuck you” from small lizards, not unexpectedly called fuck-you lizards.
1978
G. Hasford
Short-Timers
151 [refers to Vietnam War]: The fuck-you lizards greet us.
1984
J. Fuller
Fragments
78: Did you know that if you grab one of those Fuck You lizards by the tail, he just lets go and walks away?
1986
J. Thacker
Finally the Pawn
133: That’s because of the fuck-you lizard.
1987
M. L. Lanning
Only War We Had
253: FNGs were told that the “fuck-you” lizards were NVA taunting us.
1988
M. Clodfelter
Mad Minutes
33 [refers to 1965]: Naturally we labeled these leftovers from the prehistoric past “Fuck You Lizards.”
1996
S. O’Nan
Names of the Dead
124: They’d told him about this; it was a gecko—a fuck-you lizard.
2002
R. Hoyt
Old Soldiers Sometimes Lie
245: American
sailors at Subic Bay and airmen at Clark Air Force Base had famously called it the Fuck You lizard.
fuck-you money
noun
Especially
Business
. sufficient money to give one personal freedom, esp. the freedom to quit one’s job; (
broadly
) an (unexpected) financial windfall.
1969
C. Blair
Board Room
294: I don’t care. I’ve got my fuck-you money.
1975
L. Rust Hills in
Esquire
(Dec.) 180: “But all that money.… ”…“Well, it’s ‘fuck-you’ money.… It gives me freedom and independence so I won’t have to write something that doesn’t appeal to me.”
1986
New Republic
(Dec. 8) 11: [Donald] Regan huddled in the Oval Office with the president.… “I’ve got something that none of those other guys have.”…“What is it?” To which Regan, wealthy from his days as boss of Merrill Lynch, replied, “Fuck you money.”
1988
Granta
23 (Spring) 246: Earning more doesn’t make the problem go away unless you’re saving for “fuck you” money. A month ago Brian told me about “fuck you” money. “It’s the amount of money you need to be able to say ‘Fuck you’ to anyone.” Brian reckoned the current amount to be three million pounds.
1994
N.Y.C. man, age 30: When you win the lottery, you get
fuck-you money
. Anyone you don’t want to bother with, you can afford to say “Fuck you!”
1994
Times Literary Supplement
(Nov. 18) 9: “Fuck-you-money,” for having enough money set aside to tell one’s boss to screw off, should the impulse to do so arise.
1995
New York Times Magazine
(Nov. 19) 46: The Number is often used interchangeably with another term, an unprintable one that describes the sum you need to be able to tell your boss you’ve had enough. Its family-newspaper approximation would be Forget You Money.
1999
Vanity Fair
(Dec.) 216/2: I came up with a figure of something like $7 million. But “fuck-you money,” as the retirement number is commonly referred to out here, can be a lot less.
2004
T. L. Lee & C. M. Anthony
Gotham Diaries
7: He had yet to make the transaction that would put him over the top, give him some fuck-you money and social respect.