The F-Word (7 page)

James Lambert, editor of the
Macquarie Book of Slang
, was kind enough to provide extensive citations from Australia and New Zealand in addition to many quotations from often obscure British
and American sources. I am grateful for his continued help with this edition. He has been a friend for many years, despite the fact that we have never met in person.

My close friends and colleagues Jonathon Green and Tom Dalzell, slang lexicographers extraordinaire, were extremely generous in every way, personally and professionally. I am as grateful to them for their hospitality over the years as I am for their willingness to share painstakingly collected evidence from their own extensive collections.

For help with certain terms, and for specific editorial advice, I am grateful to Daniel Menaker, Jennifer Dowling, Judy Kaplan, Sarah Burnes, Jeremy Kareken, Charles Levine, Sam Pratt, Alison Biggert, Arnold Zwicky, Barry Popik, William Monahan, Edward Hutchinson, Stephen Berg, Andrew Cohen of
Newsweek
, Aaron Barnhart, Michele Tepper, and the Old and Young Hats of AFU GmbH.

More recently I must thank members of the American Dialect Society mailing list, especially Bill Mullins, Neal Whitman, John Patrick, John Baker, Wilson Gray, and Mark Peters for their detailed suggestions. Michael Adams has been a good friend and a patient colleague; his book
Slang: The People’s Poetry
is the best treatment of an unwieldy subject. Adrian Flynn took time away from his studies to hit the library on my behalf. Ben Zimmer has been extremely generous and helpful over the years; along with Fred Shapiro he is the best database plunderer I’ve ever encountered. Larry Horn, Arnold Zwicky, and Ron Butters gave much useful advice. David Simon corresponded with me about
eye-fuck
, and graciously sent me original shooting scripts of his brilliant show
The Wire
.

I am extremely grateful to my colleagues at the
Oxford English Dictionary
. In particular, I would like to mention Chief Editor John Simpson; Robert Faber, who supported my work on this project more than he had to; Michael Proffit, for many years of close support and friendship; and Graeme Diamond, with whom
I revised the
OED
’s entries for
fuck
and its relations. It is a rare and humbling pleasure to work in an environment with so many brilliant and dedicated people.

At Oxford University Press, my thanks to Ben Keene, for early editorial support; Damon Zucca and Grace Labatt, for helping bring the project to completion; Jess Lawson, for her production wizardry; Vin Dang for the interior design; Mary Araneo and Steve Cestaro in Production; Purdy for his unstinting publicity efforts; Amy Tiedemann and Kim Craven in Marketing for long-time enthusiasm; and above all to Casper Grathwohl for his approval and support of the book.

Ira Silverberg, my friend and agent (in that order), has been supportive for so long and for so little reason that I can’t even begin to express my appreciation.

I received technical support from a number of different sources. Thanks especially to Adam Turoff for extensive help with the XML and XSLT used to produce the book, and for his constant availability to help with complicated issues. A shout-out to all of my colleagues on the Catalyst web framework. Perrin Harkins was extremely generous with his vast knowledge of programming. Paul Steiner at OUP provided ideal support, belying the stereotype of the IT drone. Nonpersonal thanks for some of the underlying technologies go out to Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, and Linus Torvalds, among many others.

This editor, and all students of the F-word, owe an enormous debt to the late Professor Allen Walker Read for his work on the word. Professor Read has made many hugely important contributions to the study of English; he is perhaps best known for his research on
O.K
. But his 1934 article “An Obscenity Symbol” is the pioneering study of the word; without his exhaustive research, we would know far less about this most significant word. His 1974 follow-up, “An Obscenity Symbol After Four Decades,” admirably adds forty years of study to our knowledge.

Jonathan Lighter is the greatest slang lexicographer in history. It has been a deep honor to work with him and I continued to be humbled by his astonishing abilities at research, sense division, and defining. There has not been a single entry I have ever worked on that he could not have done better.

And finally, my immense love and gratitude to Sarah Lang, who showed me that I could be happy.

Jesse Sheidlower, New York, March 2009

absofuckinglutely
adverb

absolutely. Compare -
FUCKING
-,
infix.

1921
Notes & Queries
(Nov. 19) 415 [refers to WWI]: The soldier’s actual speech…was absolutely impregnated with one word which (to use it as a basis for alliteration) the fastidious frown at as “filthy”.… Words were split up to admit it: “absolutely” became “abso—lutely.”
1945
S. J. Baker
Australian Language
258: Transconti-bloody-nental, abso-f—g-lutely, inde-bloody-pendent.
1970
C. Major
Dictionary of Afro-American Slang
19:
Absofuckinglutely
: without doubt.
1973
W. T. Huggett
Body Count
ch. viii: That’s right, Carlysle, that’s abso-fucking-lutely right.
1985
D. Bodey
F.N.G
. 224: “Like, don’t it seem like the time has gone fast now?” “Abso-fuckin’-lutely.”
1995
N.Y. Observer
(Apr. 24) 19: “Remember me?”.… “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
2002
J. Thompson
Wide Blue Yonder
ii. 147: He was nuts. Absofuckinglutely.
2008
New York Magazine
(Aug. 11) 31: I decided to e-mail Liz Rosenberg, Madonna’s publicist since fuh-evah…to see if she would…talk about celebrities and plastic surgery. “Absofuckinlutely,” she wrote back.

AMF
interjection

“adios
[or
a
loha],
m
other
f
ucker”; good-bye; the finish.
Jocular.

1963
in P. Tamony
Motherfucker
7: “A.M.F.… adios mother fucker,”…“goodbye friend.” [
1966
M. Braly
On the Yard
120: And that’s adios mother fuckers.]
1973
McA. Layne
How Audie Murphy Died in Vietnam
(unpaged):
A.M.F.
Adios mother fahckers.
1980
D. J. Cragg
Lexicon Militaris
:
AMF.
Adios (or Aloha) Motherfucker.
1988
K. Kijewski
Stray Kat Waltz
286: You’re outta here. Just like that. Leaving us behind and everything. Not thinking about us or anything. Just AMF.
2001
R. Martini
Hot Straight & Normal
17: Alpha Mike Foxtrot—Acronym for “Adios, My Friend.” Also seen as initials, “AMF.” Other terms may be used for the “M,” and “F.”
2003
D. Farris
Lie Still
179: “I will not be able to snatch your ass back from the fire if the GME committee says AMF.” “AMF?” “
Adios
, Mutha Fucka.”

artfuck
noun

1
. an artistic person, especially one who is elitist or pretentious.

1987
B. E. Ellis
Rules of Attraction
110: I turn back to our table, with the Art Fucks because they seem less boring.
1999
M. Estep
Soft Maniacs
121: The way I look, it’s hard to tell if I’m some deliberately disheveled successful artfuck or just a down-and-out guy.
2004
J. A. Juarez
Brotherhood of Corruption
2: Their parents are loaded, so they can afford to be art fucks. Escaping responsibility, if you ask me.
2005
Houston Press
(June 23) (Nexis): I just think he’s one of the most pretentious art fucks I’ve ever encountered.… He thinks he’s some amazing human being and talks down to so many kids.

2
. something (especially a piece or style of music) that is pretentiously artistic. Often as
adjective
.

1993
“The Virgin Prunes” (album title): Artfuck: A compilation of rarities.
1997
D. Waller in D. Snowden
Make Music go Bang!
123: The industrial-strength art-fuck Screamers didn’t sound anything like the hippy-hippy shake-shake Nerves.
2001
Village Voice
(Nov. 27) 64/1: From jackhammer fuzz-romps to well-constructed rapid-fire raveups to art-fuck synth-pop.
2004
C. Eddy in
Village Voice
(Dec. 1) C77: The eight more hipster-oriented units whose current releases are among those happily hyped below may well have a hard time supporting such proudly post-graduate artfuck endeavors through four long years of the ownership society.

ASAFP
adverb

“
as s
oon
a
s
f
ucking
p
ossible”; immediately.

1977
P. Tauber
Last Best Hope
406: It’s got to be hand-carried—ASAFP.
1985
J. Hughes
Weird Science
(film): I want you out of here ASAFP!
1990
P. Munro
Slang U
. 23:
A.S.A.F.P
. as soon as possible, or sooner.
2005
Variety
(Sept. 19) 73: Tough-as-nails boss Colonel McNulty (Dennis Hopper), a can-do guy who wants stuff done “ASAFP.”

ass-fuck
noun

1
. an act of anal copulation.

1940
J. Del Torto
Graffiti Transcript
(Kinsey Institute): Make date for assfuck.
1941
G. Legman in G. V. Henry
Sex Variants
II 1157:
Ass-fuck
…An act of pedication.
1974
“Linda Lovelace”
Diary
66: He gave me the best ass-fuck I’ve ever had.
1975
C. Skinner
Carol’s Curious Passion
60: It was no use talking to Bert. For he was carried away with his ass fuck.
1976
J. Johnson
Oriental Festival
136: I want to give you a tremendous ass fuck.
1981
S. Hite
Hite Report on Male Sexuality
530: The afterglow of a good ass-fuck can last for days.
2004
T. Bentley
Surrender
164: Now I just want a three-hour ass-fuck where I give him all my power, he takes it, and takes me to visit God.

2
. an instance of cruel victimization; a terrible situation.

1977
P. Schrader
Blue Collar
14: No way he was gonna take this assfuck forever.
1987
B. Massumi trans. G. Deleuze & F. Guattari
Thousand Plateaus
Foreword x: What got me by during that period was conceiving the history of philosophy as a kind of ass-fuck, or, what amounts to the same thing, an immaculate conception. I imagined myself approaching an author from behind and giving him a child that would indeed be his but would nonetheless be monstrous.
2005
D. H. Wilson
Pseudo-City
209: You called life an assfuck.
2008
Gawker
(Oct. 31) (online): Apparently, they hadn’t been paying insurance premiums either and people who went to the doctor in November or December were being denied their claims because they had no idea they weren’t insured any longer. One big giant ass fuck, basically.

3
. a despicable person.

2000
S.F. Weekly
(Mar. 1) (Nexis): So thank you SF Weekly for giving this stupid ass fuck of a human the time for this story.
2003
E. Shade
Eyesores
127: I pushed Shitwad into a sand trap and kicked sand in his face. I called him a dirty pissant little ass-fuck.
2004
“Minister Faust”
Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad
362: Next time I tell you
ass-fucks what I want done, I want it done, and I want it done right.
2007
B. Frazer
Hyper-Chondriac
98: I’m surprised this Bikram assfuck allows anyone to even use the temperature of 105 degrees without winding up in court.

ass-fuck
verb

1
. to engage in anal copulation [with].

[
1866
Romance of Lust
IV 361: We had not as yet…indulged even in bottom-fucking the women.]
1940
J. Del Torto
Graffiti Transcript
(Kinsey Institute): Want to be assfucked.
1941
G. Legman in G. V. Henry
Sex Variants
II 1157:
Ass-fuck
…To pedicate.
1971
D. Rader
Government Inspected Meat
105: Get ass-fucked like a bender by a butching lover.
1974–77
L. Heinemann
Close Quarters
184: She would…ass-fuck.
1984
W. D. Ehrhart
Marking Time
66: Pam, that old boyfriend of yours—you…even ass-fuck the guy!
1992
Madonna
Sex
(unpaged): That’s what ass-fucking is all about. It’s the most pleasurable way to get fucked.
1998
Sick Puppy Comix
(No. 8) (Sydney, Australia) 21: You gotta write about sweet, tender little girlies getting arsefucked like cheap little whores!
2005
“Noire”
G-Spot
36: He held me down and ass-fucked me until I thought I would die.