The F-Word (13 page)

2
.
British
. to use the word “fuck”; chiefly in phrase:
to eff and blind
to swear frequently; to use strong language.

1943
M. Harrison
Reported Safe Arrival
31: They’d eff and blind till yer ear-’oles started ter frizzle.
1959
A. Wesker
Chicken Soup with Barley
i. ii: He started effing and blinding and threw their books on the floor.
1965
J. Gaskell
Fabulous Heroine
50: He would argue and eff in an intellectual ecstasy all afternoon.
1977
J. Rosenthal
Spend, Spend, Spend
in
Bar Mitzvah Boy & Other Television Plays
(1987) 178:
First Woman
: Well, they haven’t the time really, fair’s fair. It’s a full-time job is boozing all day.
Second Woman
: I believe they were paralytic in the Miners Arms. Effing and blinding. You’d think they’d ban them … but they won’t.
First Woman
: Mrs Danby said the police were round to them three o’clock this morning. Disturbing the peace.
1981
W. Foley
Back to Forest
in
Forest Trilogy
(1992) 309: In winter he effed and blinded the queueing customers who were making life hard for him and his assistant fryer.
1989
J. Galloway
Trick is to Keep Breathing
(1991) 26: A man and a woman shouting, effing and blinding and the little girl starts screaming.
1995
M. Amis
Information
48: Even the Asians and West Indians who lived there had somehow become saxonized—they loped and leered, they peed, veed, queued, effed and blinded, just like the locals.
1999
L. Hird
Born Free
xiv. 109: A bairn starts screaming up the back and I hear the mother effing away, smacking it.
2003
C. Birch
Turn Again Home
iii. 47: She’d turned up at Edmund and Isabel’s blind drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Disgusting! Effing and blinding she was in front of the children.

em-eff
variant of
M.F
.

eye-fuck
verb

to gaze at lecherously; ogle. Also: (especially
Military
) to stare at, especially with hostility; (
hence, Military
) to look around.

1916
H. N. Cary
Slang of Venery
I 79:
Eye Fuck
—To stare and leer at a woman.
1971
P. Barnes
Pawns
69: The DI’s have picked out the recruits who don’t look sharp, who fall behind in the runs, or are caught “eye-fucking.” (“Eye-fucking” is a heinous crime in Marine Corps boot camp. It consists of moving one’s eyeballs to the side while standing at attention.)
1972
B. Rodgers
Queens’ Vernacular
77:
Eye fuck
(late ’60s)…to stare holes through someone.
1980
M. Baker
Nam
36: Smokey catches the dude looking at him out of the corner of his eye. He says, “Are you eye-fucking me, boy? I don’t want your scuzzy eyes looking at me.”
1980
J. DiFusco et al.
Tracers
12: While maggots are at attention, they will not talk, they will not eye-fuck the area, they will listen to me and only me!
1983
W. D. Ehrhart
Vietnam to Perkasie
30 [refers to 1966]: You will not talk. You will not eye-fuck the area.
Ibid.
32: You eye-fuckin’ me, sweetpea? You wanna fuck me, scum?
1988
J. Norst
Colors
17: Killer Bee…was… eye-fucking McGavin.
1991
J. T. Ward
Dear Mom
5 [refers to 1968]: You will stand at attention, eyes forward. I don’t want you eyefucking me or the area.
1991
D. Simon
Homicide
260: And damned if he didn’t always come back with some pieces of information about the dead man. Any other detective would get eyefucked and maybe cursed, but Worden somehow managed to take the corner boys beyond that.
1997
D. Simon & E. Burns
Corner
16: Three of the plainclothesmen stand over them, shouting; a fourth stands in the street, eyefucking the crews on the Mount Street corners.
2000
E. Reid
Midnight Sun
29: Her boyfriend, a tattooed biker, stood nearby…making sure we weren’t eyefucking her.
2008
A. Davies
Mine All Mine
155: The daughters of tourists in their sherbet-colored minis getting eyefucked by vendedores.

F
variant of
EFF
.

face-fuck
verb

=
MOUTH-FUCK
. Hence
face-fucker
noun
.

1972
“Coop”
Sexy Southern Boy
66: He was lying on his back now, letting me do all the work, just enjoying it, rather than face-fucking me, like he’d done the first time.
a
1980
About Time: Anthology of California Prison Writing
19: One million days filled with cumdrunk bitches who facefuck and rimshot and tonguebathe.
1983
R. N. Boyd
Joint Sissies
in
Sex behind Bars
(1984) 56: Gary was a real face-fucker; it was hard to catch my breath while doing him.
1990
S. Morgan
Homeboy
xlvi. 277: Billy had grabbed Magdalena by the hair and lifted her around and slammed her up against the cage’s wire mesh, which he clutched to facefuck her.
1999
R. T. Davies
Queer as Folk: Scripts
(Episode 4) 113 (stage direction): Quickly, Stuart gets Nathan on to his knees, face-fucks him. With one hand on the back of Nathan’s head, Stuart reaches out to balance himself.
2006
R. Kick
Everything You Know about Sex is Wrong
120/2: They want to open their throat, get facefucked, and swallow a load of cum.

fan-fucking-tastic
adjective

wonderful; fantastic. See -
FUCKING
-,
infix,
for related forms.

1970
T. Southern
Blue Movie
108: Tony was delighted. “Fan-fucking-tastic!”
1971
National Lampoon
(Aug.) 26: Just groove on those colors! Fan-fucking-tastic!
1976
A. Schroeder
Shaking It Rough
78: “Fan-fucking-tastic!” Corso whistles in astonishment.
1977
D. Bredes
Hard Feelings
42: He said “Fan-fucking-tastic!” over and over.
1981
R. Graziano & R. Corsel
Somebody Down Here Likes Me Too
156: Frankie…is fanfuckintastic!
1988
M. Atwood
Cat’s Eye
298: Fan-fuckin’-tastic.
1989
C. Hiaasen
Skin Tight
xxiii. 248: “Swell,” said Mur-dock. “That means it’s only what?—another four, five hours in the mud. Fanfuckingtastic. By then it’ll be good and dark too.”
1993
M. Crichton
Disclosure
i. 56: I am pleased to report…that as of half an hour ago, The Corridor is fan-fucking-
tastic
.
2004
J. Moore
Dot.homme
xiv. 171: “Isn’t this fan-fucking-tastic, Jess!” she’d shrieked above the music, spinning me around until I felt utterly sick.

fanny
verb

British.
(a euphemism for
FUCK
around
verb
). Usually as
fanny about.

1971
J. Leasor
Love-All
iv. 62: We haven’t much time to fanny about.
1996
P. Gregory
Perfectly Correct
246: I’m not accustomed to being fannied about. I don’t like this will-you won’t-you stuff, Lou. You said you’d come for the weekend and I want you there with me.
2000
M. Gayle
Turning Thirty
xxxix. 159: That’s three years wasted. Three years! If I hadn’t spent all that time fannying around in lecture halls I’d be twenty-seven now instead of thirty!
2004
Independent
(Apr. 8) (Review section) 13/1: I took the family to Cowley Manor in Gloucestershire at the weekend, and having fannied around for 20 minutes in London deciding what to pack, eventually decided to go in what I was wearing.
2008
Guardian
(Aug. 30) 7: It is time to end the British habit of fannying about with Olympic football.

Fanny Adams
verb
[euphemism for
FUCK ALL
noun
, after
Fanny Adams
, young English girl murdered in 1867]

British
=
FUCK ALL
noun
. Usually used with
sweet
.

1919
W. H. Downing
Digger Dialect
22: F.A., ‘Fanny Adams’, or ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’—nothing; vacuity.
1930
J. Brophy & E. Partridge
Songs & Slang of the British Soldier
123: F.A. Sometimes lengthened into Sweet F.A. or bowdlerized into Sweet Fanny Adams. Used to mean ‘nothing’
where something was expected.
1949
J. R. Cole
It was so Late
61: What do they do? Sweet Fanny Adams!
1958
B. Behan
Borstal Boy
15: You’ll order sweet fanny adams from outside, and never you mind the regulations, I’ll regulate you.
1978
B. Ashley
Kind of Wild Justice
(2002) 92: There was sweet Fanny Adams around here, only mud and slippery wood, and stink.
1983
J. H. Heminway
No Man’s Land
5: I was no ruddy star and I knew sweet Fanny Adams about acting, but I did have fun.
1990
M. Leigh
Life is Sweet
in
Naked & Other Screenplays
(1995) 145: So what you been doin’ all mornin’? Sweet Fanny Adams, as usual.
1999
S. Perera
Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet
xiv. 186: “You sound like my mum.” “And you’re going to end up like her: working your fingers to the bone for sweet Fanny Adams.”
2002
J. Diski
Stranger on a Train
112: You’re completely drunk, you are drunk as a horse’s arse and you know sweet fanny adams about the little people. You are a fraud.

fark
verb

Chiefly
Australian
. (a partial euphemism, in various senses, parts of speech, and derived forms, for)
FUCK
.

1971
J. Hibberd
Stretch of the Imagination
23: (He continues [gardening] for a while, then stops suddenly, in pain and bent over at a fixed angle at the hips.) Faaarrk.
1983
D. Foster
Plumbum
ii. 56: “When it somes to drumming, you’d make a good panel beater.” “Farkin’ hell!”
1992
Picture
(Sydney) (Feb. 5) 26/1: Experts reckon that now our bastard drought has broken, roaches will breed like buggery and we’ll stand no farkin’ chance.
1994
Picture
(Sydney) (Feb. 5) 14/2: And if this year’s show is anything to go by, that’ll be a dead farkin’ cert.
1996
Tracks
(Sydney) (June) 51/2: Faark! (Sorry, I had to say that ’cause this word is a major part of Australian surfer’s dialect.)
1998
Hairball Goulash
(Wodonga, NSW) 26: They did walk and they di[d] see in each other that words could not express how beautiful these dirty grotty streets in this farked up hostile world looked to them…
1998
Hairball Goulash
(Wodonga, NSW) 26: Tanith, and her typewriter put this zine together, and it is so farken cool.
2001
Touch
(Dec.) 127/1: So Touch Magazine is back. Thank fuck. It’s about farking time that the best magazine made its late but welcome spectacular entrance on the market.
2003
K. Kuitenbrouwer
Way Up
iv. 62: Jane Rae, Joanie and I went for a walk so we could smoke up, farking freezing.

F-bomb
noun

the word
FUCK
or one of its variants or compounds, esp. with reference to it as a shocking or inappropriate term. Often in
to drop the F-bomb
.

1988
Newsday
(New York) (Aug. 11) i. 144/3: That was when I used to use the F-bomb.
1991
Boston Globe
(Jan. 11) (Sports section) 31: It looked like I was calling him everything in the book.… I dropped the F-bomb a few times.
1995
Denver Post
(June 11) B 10/3: I tried not to say any F-bombs with my mom there.
2000
Sporting News
(Oct. 23) 54: 4… Times (at least) lip readers with an aversion to the f-bomb would have blushed if they watched Games 3 and 4 of the NLCS.
2002
A. St. John in
Village Voice
(Aug. 28) 159/4: When he got a questionable call late in the fifth set against Hewitt, he launched an atypical F-bomb on the umpire and promptly pissed away what was left of the match.
2006
Philadelphia Inquirer
(May 7) B4/5: Two years ago, Vice President Cheney dropped the f-bomb on Sen. Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor, then defiantly said, “I feel better now.”
2008
Sports Illustrated
(Dec. 19) 16: Of course, with no restrictor plates on anyone’s mouth, the language can get hotter than a brake pad at Martinsville—Stewart’s f bomb-laden exchange with crew chief Greg Zipadelli at Indy in July being Exhibit A.