Authors: Jesse Sheidlower
motherfuck
interjection
(used to express astonishment, anger, etc.).
1970
W. C. Woods
Killing Zone
143: Mother
fuck
—what happened to you?
1976
R. Price
Bloodbrothers
20: Mother
-fuck!
1979
B. Gutcheon
New Girls
249: Motherfuck, guess who that is?
1998
GQ
(Nov.) 172: He spins around, kicks the ground, stares down the offending patch of wood. “Mother
fuck
,” he mutters.
1998
J. Manos Jr. & D. Chase
College
in
Sopranos
((television shooting script) 1st Ser.) 12: Chris’s car jerks to a stop. Jacket over his head, Chris runs to a pay phone, jams his body under the shell, inserts quarters while rain pelts his back.
Christopher.
Mothefuck.
2005
“Noire”
Candy Licker
xxvi. 279: “Motherfuck!” Hurricane cursed.
motherfucker
noun
1
.
a
. a despicable or contemptible person. [The 1928, 1935, 1939, and 1946 quotations are euphemistic.]
1918
Letter
in
Journal of American History
(1995) LXXXI 1585: You low-down Mother Fuckers can put a gun in our hands but who is able to take it out? [
1918
in H. De Witt
Bawdy Barrack-Room Ballads
: The little red runt he grew and grew/****ed his mother and sister too.]
1928
C. McKay
Banjo
229: I’ve been made a fool of by many a skirt, but it’s the first time a mother-plugger done got me like this.
1935
G.W. Henderson
Ollie Miss
82: The man from Swanson had passed the ugly word then, and the Hannon boy had flung it back… neatly compounded, with the word “mother” preceding it. The Swanson boy… whipped out his razor.
ca
1935
in G. Logsdon
Whorehouse Bells were Ringing
95: Motherfucker, I’ll slice off your prick.
1935
in P. Oliver
Blues Tradition
232: He’s a dirty mother fuyer, he don’t mean no good. [
1936
A. W. Little
From Harlem to the Rhine
5 [refers to 1917]: And so I saiz ter him, Cap’n Suh, “Ever-ting you saiz
Ah am—yoo is double—even de part against yoo mudder.… Ef yoo saiz anyt’ing mo’ ter me Ah’ll cut yoo heart out.”]
1938
“Justinian”
Americana Sexualis
29:
Mother-Fucker
. n. An incestuous male. The most intense term of opprobrium among the U.S. lower classes. Probable Sicilian origin. C. 20. Urban communities only. No sexual connotation; used merely as an epithet.
1939
in A. Banks
First-Person
255: Why you poor Brooklyn motherfrigger, I’ll wreck this goddamn place with you.
1946
M. Mezzrow & B. Wolfe
Really the Blues
14: A motherferyer that would cut your throat for looking.
1946
J. Del Torto
Graffiti Transcript
(Kinsey Institute): Susie is a mother fucker.
1948
N. Mailer
Naked & Dead
152: I was gonna shoot the mother-fugger but you were in the way.
1950
Commentary
X 62: When asked what his chief duties were in a Negro settlement house for boys, a social worker answered, “Teaching them euphemisms for mother—(unprintable word).”
1954
R. Lindner
50-Minute Hour
152 [refers to
ca
1938]: During my years in prison work I had observed that one expletive, that referring to intercourse between son and mother (m-f), was at once the most dangerous and the most frequent on the lips of the psychopath. I had actually seen men killed for using it.
1954
in D. Wepman et al.
The Life
(1976) 110: Cocksuckers by the dozens, motherfuckers and their cousins.
1956
in P. Oliver
Blues Tradition
240: Your mama…she’s a runnin’ motherfucker, cheap cocksucker.
1957
H. Simmons
Corner Boy
79: Kill that mother fug—.
1958
Stack A Lee
(typescript, Kinsey Institute) 1: I’m that bad motherfucker they call Stack A Lee.
1958
E. Gilbert
Vice Trap
44: “You mother—” she said to me, crying.
1959
W. Burroughs
Naked Lunch
40: I’ll cut your throat you white mother fucker.
1962
J. O. Killens
Then We Heard the Thunder
284: Every time I walk up the company street I hear somebody calling somebody else a mother-fucker or a sonofabitch.
1963–64
K. Kesey
Sometimes a Great Notion
71: My brother is a motherfucker.
1965
C. Brown
Manchild in the Promised Land
137: Don’t explain yourself to that mother-fucker.
1965
R. E. Conot
Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness
222: Even the word
motherfucker
takes on different connotation. For the white it is the image of incest; for the Negro it is the picture of a white man lying with a black woman who is his, the Negro’s, mother.
1968
A. Montagu
Letter to P. Tamony
(June 24): Mr. Donald C. Greason has written to me that he heard the epithet [
motherfucker
] often from a friend of his at the front during late 1917.
1968
H. Van Dyke
Blood of Strawberries
177: If you even touch it, motherfucker, you die.
1968
R. Gover
JC
34: Sonny you nacheral sack a twenty diffrent mothahfuggahs.
1971
O. Guffy & C. Ledner
Ossie
46 [refers to
ca
1940]: “You’re a motherfucker.” “Your mama’s one.”
1974
V. E. Smith
Jones Men
18: Look at that bitch. Nasty motherfucker.
1992
T. Hosansky & P. Sparling
Working Vice
197: People called her motherfucker…[and] bitch.
1995
Jerry Springer Show
(syndicated TV series): Come on, motherf-cker! [vowel bleeped out].
b
. Especially
Black English & Military
. (in positive contexts) a fellow; person; an admirable person; (
often
) a formidable person.
1958
Stack A Lee
(typescript, Kinsey Institute) 1: He…said who put the hole in this motherfucker’s head?/Who could the murderer of this poor man be?
1964
R. D. Abrahams
Deep down in Jungle
(Appendix II) 261: One of the best things which can be said of a man is that he is a “mean motherfucker” or a “tough motherfucker,” but to call him just a “mother-fucker” is to invite reprisal.
1970
E. E. Landy
Underground Dictionary
135:
Mother fucker…
Positive, complimentary name for a friend—e.g.,
Hey, mother fucker, what’s happening?
1971
in S. D. Horwitt
Let Them Call Me Rebel
4 [refers to 1930s]: Pretty soon word of the incident spread throughout the gang. “That Alinsky, he’s an all-right motherfucker,” the kids would say, and… they began to trust me.
1971
J. Cheever in
Letters
(1988) 284: A puertorican drug-pusher…exclaimed: “Oh what a cool motherfucker was that Machiavelli.”
1972
in W. King
Black Anthology
101: Joe was a motherfucker. A revolutionary motherfucker. A black man made of steel iron.
1973
J.R. Coleman
Blue-Collar
62: A word like “motherfucker” here is often just a synonym for man, no more and no less. (“Who’s that new motherfucker over there?” or “I told the motherfucker we’d pick up him and his bitch at eight.”)
1973
L. Bangs
Canned Heat
in
Mainlines, Blood Feasts, Bad Taste
(2003) 37: Vestine was an incredible, scorching motherfucker of a guitarist, knocking you through the wall.
1973
R. Roth
Sand in Wind
154: Hey, motherfuckers, look at this.
Ibid.
438: I’ve met some of the best motherfuckers I’ve ever known in the [Marine Corps].
1972–74
H. Hawes & D. Asher
Raise Up off Me
3 [refers to 1930s]: Anybody who
looked
good was automatically a motherfucker.
Ibid.
98: We…talked about Debussy and Bach and what bad motherfuckers those cats were hundreds of years ago.
1974
L. A. Lacy
Native Daughter
108: Fine…nice legs…tall…would be a motherfucker if she didn’t talk so much.
1974
V.E. Smith
Jones Men
156: I’m just as cool as the next motherfucker.
1977
L. Jordan
Hype
44: “C’mere, you little motherfucker,” he said tenderly, reaching for her.
1978
B. Johnson
What’s Happenin’?
57: Once I figured out that a “bad
mother-fucker” was an all-right dude, I at least had a shot at communicating.
1978
W. Strieber
Wolfen
127: You the scaredest motherfucker I’ve seen in a good long while.
a
1983
J. Baugh
Black Street Speech
24: See, like if a brother gets on my case I can tell blood, “Hey motherfucker, you can kiss my ass,” and the brother can…take it in stride—cause he know where I’m comin from. But you can’t be tellin no white dude that.
1987
D. Sherman
Main Force
96 [refers to 1966]: “That bad out there, huh?” “Worse, except we’re the baddest mother-fuckers in the valley.”
1984–88
D. Hackworth & J. Sherman
About Face
510 [refers to Vietnam War]: In the Airborne, the term “motherfucker,” unless spoken harshly, was among the highest terms of endearment.
1993
Face
(Sept.) 141/1: Ice-T recorded an as yet unre-leased version of Sly Stone’s “Don’t Call Me Nigger Whitey” with Perry Farell, who he calls “the ultimate cool motherfucker.”
2003
A. Swofford
Jarhead
25: He’s an all right motherfucker.… He’s all right for a reporter.
2
.
a
. an infuriating, hateful, or oppressive thing, difficult task, etc.; (
broadly
) a thing.
1948
N. Mailer
Naked & Dead
345: You know what the mother-fugger’ll be like?…We’ll be lucky to get out of there with our goddam heads on.
1960
J. Peacock
Valhalla
ch. iv: “I’ll get the motherfuckers [beer cans],” Dallas offered.
1962
B. Jackson
In the Life
156: Oh, life’s a motherfucker, Bruce.
1962
T. Berger
Reinhart
386: Let me run that big motherfu—.
1967–68
N. von Hoffman
We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against
98: The street is a rough motherfucker.
1969
Playboy
(Dec.) 290: Let’s burn this motherfucker down.
1973
E. Jong
Fear of Flying
4: So I keep concentrating very hard, helping the pilot…fly the 250-passenger motherfucker.
1974
D. Goines
Daddy Cool
ix. 115: Damn, baby…whose goddamn poolroom is this anyway? To listen to him talk, you’d think he owned the motherfucker!
1975
N. De Mille
Smack Man
108: What a motherfucker that’s going to be, given the rules of evidence in this state.
1978
S. King
Stand
84: Eight milkshakes (why…had he bought eight of the mother-fuckers?)
1981
L. Heinemann in
Harper’s
(Aug.) 58: The whole company… caught some mean kind of shit and every swinging dick
but
him bought the motherfucker.
1981
National Lampoon
(July) 16: Being 7’4” is a motherfucker.
1981
Penthouse
(Mar.) 174: Heroin is…an insidious motherfucker.
1982
B. Downey
Uncle Sam Must be Losing the War
23 [refers to WWII]: Some of them… cussed their native state for being a “prejudiced motherfucker.”
1991
J. Lamar
Bourgeois
Blues
32: I knew how to make those motherfuckers gleam.
1993
K. Scott
Monster
163: The threat of being in prison for life was a muthafucka.
2005
“Noire”
Candy Licker
xxiii. 241: He tossed me a pair of sunglasses.… “Put these motherfuckers on and make sure you don’t take ’em off.”
b
. an infuriating or surprising situation or state of affairs.
1968
in B. Edelman
Dear America
81: Sometimes it gets pretty hairy in this motherfucker.
1970
E. E. Landy
Underground Dictionary
135:
Mother fucker
… Hard-to-solve problem; rough situation.
1976
R. E. Chinn
Dig the Nigger Up
61: Now ain’t this a muthafucker!
1981
W. T. Hathaway
World of Hurt
14: This is the dumbest motherfucker I ever been in.
1987
J. Ferrandino
Firefight
98: I don’t want to die in this miserable mother-fucker.
1989
Z. Chafets
Devil’s Night
44: We’ll probably never solve the motherfucker.
1989
S. Robinson & D. Ritz
Smokey
78: We’re going to remember this motherfucker…’cause I don’t intend to let it happen again.
1994
T. Woods
True to Game
xiii. 152: Where’s Bridgette, ’cause she could get her ass kicked next up in this motherfucker.