Book spine poem #52: Swearing Is Good for You

A new book spine poem, on a linguistic (and mildly sweary) theme, with some notes on its contents below the photograph.

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Swearing Is Good for You

The F-word – spell it out:
Swearing is good for you.
Um . . . holy shit. Says who?

The man who lost his language swearing
*gestures* because internet
(What the F);
The woman who talked to herself
in praise of profanity
(Just my type).

Shady characters,
Role models.

*

*

Thank you to the authors: Jesse Sheidlower, David Crystal, Emma Byrne, Michael Erard, Melissa Mohr, Anne Curzan, Sheila Hale, Geoffrey Hughes, Desmond Morris, Gretchen McCulloch, Benjamin Bergen, A. L. Barker, Michael Adams, Simon Garfield, Keith Houston, and John Waters.

I did some work on the mighty 4th edition of The F-Word last year, copy-editing and contributing to its substantial Introduction. Strong Language, a group blog about the culture and linguistics of swearing that I co-founded with James Harbeck, reviewed the book and interviewed Sheidlower.

David Crystal has featured here several times, including in previous language-themed book spine poems ‘Broken Words’ and ‘Language, Language!’. Anne Curzan was the subject of a post about types of linguistic prescriptivism. Geoffrey Hughes’s book inspired a brief post about the surprising etymology of answer.

Desmond Morris’s book featured in a previous book spine poem, ‘Ambient Gestures’. Here on Sentence first I reviewed Gretchen McCulloch’s book, and on Strong Language I reviewed Benjamin Bergen’s and Michael Adams’s books. (Adams now also contributes to Strong Language.)

A. L. Barker’s books have shown up in a couple of previous book spine poems and in a post about an unusual use of without. Keith Houston’s book I reviewed here. The spine’s fading red suggests I should have kept its characters in the shade.

This is book spine poem no. 52. They’re not usually this long, but I guess they’re as long as they need to be. Let me know if you join in the game.

#ALBarker #AnneCurzan #BenjaminBergen #bookSpinePoem #bookSpinePoetry #bookmash #books #DavidCrystal #DesmondMorris #EmmaByrne #foundPoetry #GeoffreyHughes #GretchenMcCulloch #humour #JesseSheidlower #JohnWaters #KeithHouston #language #MelissaMohr #MichaelAdams #MichaelErard #photography #poetry #profanity #SheilaHale #SimonGarfield #swearing #visualPoetry #wordplay

Episode 79 of our #ThatWordChat brings back Jesse Sheidlower to discuss one of English's most adaptable—and controversial—words. With the release of a new edition of "The F-Word," we explore this infamous term's history and shifting meanings.

Join us: bit.ly/ThatWordChat

#Linguistics #Lexicography #LanguageHistory #JesseSheidlower #TheFWord #EnglishLanguage

Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower has been researching and writing about fuck for a fucking long time: nearly three decades. He’s also been an invaluable resource for the Strong Language blog since our very beginnings (almost ten years!). To celebrate the publication of the fourth edition of his magnum opus, The F-Word, we asked Sheidlower to share with Strong Language readers a bit about the book’s history, his research process, and what he likes to do when he’s not reading and writing about fuck. The interview was conducted over email.

[Read an excerpt of the new edition of The F-Word.]

[Buy The F-Word]

Strong Language: How did you land on fuck as your subject back in 1995? Have you always been interested in taboo words?

Jesse Sheidlower: There’s the “prosaic” answer and the “interesting” answer, both of which are true to an extent.

The interesting answer is that yes, I have always been interested in taboo words. In particular, I am interested in things that are, well, interesting, and in the case of taboo words, it’s something that many people have been interested in for a long time, but the subject was considered inappropriate for serious study, even until fairly recently. So in 1995, there just wasn’t that much serious scholarship out there about words like fuck, which meant there was a real opening to make a contribution to the field.

The prosaic answer is that I was particularly interested in the treatment of fuck in Jonathan Lighter’s Historical Dictionary of American Slang, which I was then editing for Random House, and I thought, “Surely everyone wants to know about this, but isn’t going to buy a massive (and incomplete) dictionary to find out more.” And I thought of suggesting publishing the fuck material as a separate volume, but I was also afraid to suggest this. Finally one day in an editorial meeting, where there weren’t many things on the table, I said, “What if we published a whole book on fuck, from HDAS?” and to my surprise and delight, everyone said “That’s a great idea!”

SL: The first three editions of The F-Word contained forewords by humorists: Roy Blount Jr. for the first and second, Lewis Black for the third. Was it your decision, or that of your publisher, to treat the subject as humor? (The first edition even has cartoons!) What changed with the fourth edition, which has no foreword?

JS: There were a few things going on. One was that we were genuinely worried that publishing an entire book about the word fuck would lead to legal or political problems; treating it as inherently humorous would be one way to mitigate this. Another was that it is intrinsically amusing, so why not build on this? I don’t think the cartoons were necessary, and I would have preferred a more readable typeface in the first two editions. But I think the decision to include funny but thoughtful commentary from two very different humorists was a good one. As for the fourth edition, by now we felt the material spoke for itself.

SL: Are you surprised that The F-Word is now in a fourth edition? Did you
expect to be involved in the subject for 30 years?

JS: I confess to being a little surprised! At the start, I don’t think I expected it to go through that many updates. But it’s felt appropriate each time: the second edition included additional material outside of what we drew from HDAS; the third edition doubled the size of the text, based on my access to the OED’s archives; this new edition benefits from a greatly expanded range of online resources available to me. And the word continues to be used in new and interesting ways, so there’s more work to do!

SL: Has anything surprised you about the reception to the book (in any edition)?

JS: I was pleasantly surprised at how seriously people took it. As mentioned, I do think the word is extremely interesting, but I was also, as also mentioned, concerned that there would be a strongly negative reaction — that it was “dirty,” that I was making the world a worse place, and so forth. That didn’t happen at all. So I’m glad people can appreciate that studying this is a way to learn more about humanity, and not just an excuse to be vulgar.

SL: Was any entry a particular joy to work with? A particular pain in the ass?

JS: The entry for fuck interjection was especially challenging. The OED only records a single sense, as an interjection “expressing anger, despair, frustration, alarm, etc.,” with a first quotation from 1929. This is the kind of use that’s particularly hard to research: It’s chiefly spoken, and not the kind of speech that tends to get written down; it’s not sexual, so it’s unlikely to get recorded for prurient purposes; it’s not the kind of insulting use that might get recorded in legal records.

In the early 2010s, there was extensive research done on sound recordings from the Volta Laboratories, an institution founded by Alexander Graham Bell to develop various telecommunication technologies. Archivists were able to restore some extremely early recordings, from 1885. One of these recordings, in which a lab assistant recited “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” was interrupted midway by some kind of technical failure, and the speaker said something very indistinct, but which may be “Oh, fuck!” After consulting with Mark Liberman, a phoneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, I decided to include this as the earliest example of this use, a significant and important antedating.

Another possible antedating of this sense appears in the Clara Bow film Hula, a 1927 silent. This film is known in particular for its scandalous opening scene, featuring Bow bathing nude in a stream. Less widely discussed is the fact that in this scene, Bow is stung by a bee, and appears to utter the word “Fuck!” This can’t be cited directly, but I did include this in brackets as a possible example.

I also added an even earlier sense, the use of fuck interjectionally, chiefly reduplicatively, during intercourse. This is rather common in Victorian erotica, and thereafter. The modern examples feel like the regular current use, and could be interpreted as “Oh!” or the like, but this is clearly a different use than the OED interjection of anger or despair, with an unbroken history back to the early 1870s.

Another new addition is the chiefly British use of fuck after an auxiliary verb and a pronoun to indicate dismissal of a previous statement, as in “Will I fuck!” or “Do I fuck!” Jonathon Green has an example from T.E. Lawrence in 1922.

Finally, I added the phrasal entry fuck yeah or fuck yes, which is found from 1962, in reference to World War II, and likely to have been used then, but not recorded.

SL: You cite the Internet Archive as a valuable resource this time around. Any specifics you can share?

JS: I can’t overstate the importance of the Internet Archive; it might not have been possible to do this edition without it. It holds an immense of amount of material about everything, so you don’t just get mainstream fiction (which is itself, of course, very useful), but all sorts of things you don’t normally think of. For example, high school and college yearbooks are an immensely valuable source for informal writing, but hardly anyone has used them for linguistic research before. I quote over a dozen yearbooks, all from the Internet Archive, in this edition, in many cases providing the earliest example we have: “fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” from Baltimore in 1971; “fuck you and the horse you rode in on” in Massachusetts in 1964; MFWIC ‘motherfucker what’s in charge’ from the US Air Force Academy in 1963. This material just can’t be found anywhere else.

SL: Are there any fuck-expressions you’re continuing to track – perhaps
discovered too late for this edition, but worth keeping an eye on?

JS: Tons. Mostly not ones that I discovered too late, but ones that I didn’t really have enough evidence for. Some of these include Fuckeye ‘a student or supporter of [The] Ohio State [University],’ found in the (University of Michigan) slogan Buck the Fuckeyes; the initialism FYTW ‘fuck you that’s why’; and Nofuck, a mocking term for Norfolk, Virginia. In most such cases, I did have a number of quotations, but it just felt like the entries weren’t really ready. 

There’s also a large variety of terms collected from pornography; in the introduction I mention fuck canal, fuck cave, and fuck channel, all referring to the vagina, all attested more than once, and all omitted from the book. Many such terms feel like they’re literary affectations, not in genuine use, and if they didn’t appear anywhere other than pornography, I often decided to leave them out.

SL:  What are your other lexicographical and non-lexicographical interests?

JS: I love historical lexicography in general, and I love researching things that need attention! My main non-offensive project is the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction; this was based on an OED project that I revived at the start of the pandemic. It’s in very good shape now, though I continue to add to it. I’m interested in expanding this into other, semi-related fields; in particular, gaming terminology, especially RPGs and videogames, is something that’s culturally important but under-researched. But I don’t have enough personal knowledge to take it on myself; if I had a collaborator and an academic institution interested in the research, I’d love to take it on.

Apart from the language game, I’m very interested in cocktails. A colleague and I had a high-end cocktail bar, the Threesome Tollbooth, that had to close with the pandemic; since then I’ve been involved with some private or underground events, but we hope to reopen the bar, or perhaps start something new.

SL: What’s your favorite F-word/expression? One you wish had greater
currency? One that amuses you? 

JS: In general lexicographers try not to identify “favorite” expressions; we have to give attention to everything, not just the ones we especially like. So I’ll beg off this one.

SL: One last self-interested question: Was the Strong Language blog a resource? It’s OK if it wasn’t. But if it was, we’ll preen a little.

Of course I’ve always been a big fan of our site! In general, though, I try not to quote from linguists directly; a blog talking about the linguistics of offensive language is not the best source for this reason. I do have one quotation, though: Stan Carey using AMF ‘adios, motherfuckers!’ in his entry “OMFG! Sweary Abbreviations FTFW!” from 2015.

https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2024/11/05/jesse-sheidlower-answers-our-questions-about-the-f-word/

#JesseSheidlower #TheFWord

Drumroll, please: The brand-new fourth edition of The F-Word, the definitive lexicon of the English language’s favorite and most notorious four-letter word, celebrates its publication by Oxford University Press this week. Edited by Jesse Sheidlower, who has shepherded the project since its inception in 1995, the new book is an impressive work of scholarship and an essential addition to the bookshelf of any serious swear-lover.

The first edition, published when Sheidlower was 27 and “one of lexicography’s bright young stars” (per the jacket copy), contained 232 pages. Nearly 30 years later, the new edition comprises 504 pages, more than 150 new entries, almost 150 antedatings (earlier appearances of a word or expression), and more than 2,500 new quotations.  

[Read our interview with Jesse Sheidlower]

What will you find in the new fourth edition? A lot more on fuck with, to take just one example. Fuck with didn’t appear at all in the book’s first edition; in the third edition Sheidlower provided only two senses for the term: “to meddle with (maliciously)” and “to tease (playfully).”

It now has six senses, starting with the nonlexicalized literal sense “to have sexual intercourse with,” which Sheidlower had previously omitted “because, well, it’s nonlexicalized, but this time I felt that people might complain about its absence.” You’ll also find the new sense 3, with three subsenses: “to associate with”; “to use; engage with”; and “to like; to appreciate.” Sheidlower comments: “I think these are interesting, and defining and dividing them up was interesting and challenging, and they go back a number of decades and there are a lot of good quotes from good people.” (Newly added senses are highlighted here, but not in the print edition, with a NEW glyph: 🆕.)

One of those quotes was discovered by Strong Language contributor Ben Zimmer. (Several other members of the Strong Language team assisted with the fourth edition: Jonathon Green, Mark Peters, Stan Carey.) Ben sent us this commentary on his fuck with contribution:

I found the 1994 interview with Q-Tip that Jesse used as the earliest cite for sense 3c (“to appreciate; to like or enjoy; to respect”). That same interview also supplies a cite for sense 3a (“to associate with [a person], esp. habitually”), though one could argue that it’s shading into 3c. Here’s the interview in question: 

“Bobbito’s Sound Check,” Vibe, Aug. 1994, p. 122 [Bobbito Garcia interviewing Q-Tip] B: I used to like this song. Q: Who was that? B: Modern English. Q: Sounds like Modern Bullshit. I can’t fuck with it. If it had some soul to it, I could. […] B: Not to put them in the same category, but how do you feel about working with the Beastie Boys? Q: You know why I could fuck with them? They don’t try to be black. They know they are white, trying to do this rap shit, and they’re fans of it.

And here, without further fucking around, is the new and improved entry for fuck with:

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1.🆕 to have sexual intercourse with. [Not used as a set expression.]

ca1890 My Secret Life III. 147: Did they fuck with me for fun, for letch, or for money? 1945 Folk Poems & Ballads 122: About one in a thousand is nine inches, and is invariably rather painful than otherwise to women, excepting those…who like Semiramis, the Assyrian Queen, could fuck with a stallion. 1966 O. Lewis La Vida 100: He’s terribly jealous…. I was standing at the door talking with Arturo and Papo. Héctor said to me in a loud voice, “What! Are these two inviting you to go fuck with them?” 1967 R. Hazel White Anglo-Saxon Protestant in M. Foley & D. Burnett Best American Short Stories 120: When can you come home? I can’t wait to talk with you and fuck with you. When you kiss me I get all these crazy things going. 1978 L. Kramer Faggots 298: You may never fuck with me. I must be faithful to the memory of my own beloved. 1986 “Too $hort” Blow Job Betty (rap song): Ho fuck with me, she don’t get no rest. 2017 M. Hasbrouck Muriel Avenue Sluts 242: “I’ll play this for the police.”…. Carolyn’s father, Greta’s voice said, has been fucking with her since she was eleven. Did you hear me? Eleven. She’s been living in hell since she was eleven.

2.a. to trifle, toy, meddle, or interfere with, esp. maliciously; fool; play; [Both Chandler quotations are euphemistic; compare fuck around, sense 2 and frig, verb, sense 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. 1945 K. B. Clark & J. Barker Zoot Effect in Personality Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology (vol. 40, no. 2) (Apr.) 146: Yea, so it be/I leave this thought with thee/Do not attempt to fuck with me. (An expression of manifest defiance even though stated in characteristic humorous vein).  1946 in T. Shibutani Derelicts of Company K (1978) 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 ca1915]: 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. 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. 1971 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! 1990 L. Bing Do or Die 22: ’Cause he fucked with my food…took one of my French fries. 7 TV Guide (May 18) 48: 1991 “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. 2007 D. Johnson Tree of Smoke 287: Hanson’s…finger’s on the trigger. If it comes, the enemy will feel sincerely fucked with. 2020 M. D. Headley trans. Beowulf 21: Anyone who fucks with the Geats? Bro, they have to fuck with me.

b. to tease, or provoke, esp. in a playful way; to mess with.

1965 C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land 87: Floyd was a little crazy and just liked to fuck with people by talking a lot of nonsense for a long time. 1968 R. Gover JC Saves 100: Can’t rezist fuckin with him jes one more time. 1970 J. Joplin in D. Dalton Janis 26: David: Also, people are intimidated by you because you’re such a large figure. Janis: I lost a lot of weight. David: I’m talking about symbolically. Janis: I’m just fucking with you. 1981 C. Crowe Fast Times at Ridgemont High 92: They’re just fuckin’ with us! 1996 B. Mezrich Threshold 43: I think he was just fucking with me, pulling my leg. Because most of the stuff he told me I find pretty hard to believe. 2005 M. M. Frisby Wifebeater iii. 16: Do I know? You’re fucking with me right? He’s all you talk about. 2010 Kick Ass (film) (transcription): “Have you thought about what you might want for your birthday?” “Can I get a puppy?…A cuddly fluffy one. And a Bratz Moviestar Makeover Sasha. [beat] I’m just fucking with you, daddy.” 2017 JJ Strong Us Kids Know 47: He was probably just fucking with me…. He’s a weird guy. 2023 M. McGhee Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind 105: Is he fucking with her? She’s not sure. Is this a game to him?

3.a.🆕 Chiefly in African-American use: to associate with (a person), esp. habitually.

1981 E. Bunker Little Boy Blue (1997) ix. 84: It’s good you fuckin’ with me ’n Floyd ’n gettin’ schooled. 1989 “2 Live Crew” My Seven Bizzos (rap song): On Sunday there’s Connie, who fucks with Slick Ronnie. 1994 Vibe (Aug.) 122: B: Not to put them in the same category, but how do you feel about working with the Beastie Boys? Q [sc. Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest]: You know why I could fuck with them? They don’t try to be black. They know they are white, trying to do this rap shit, and they’re fans of it. 1999 FEDS Magazine I. iv. 21/1: The hate, the fakeness, and niggers always fronting. Those ain’t the type of niggers I prefer to fuck with, but it’s business, so I don’t fuck with them too much. I stay away as much as I can and fuck with the few people who are real. 2000 W. Shaw Westsiders 181: “You finished that track you were working on with Budman?” “Hell, I ain’t fucking with Budman any more.” 2005 L. Lennox Crack Head 211: “I’m ready to do whatever is asked of me for the team.” “That’s why I fuck with you, Smurf.” 2012 M. Archer Trunk-Space You’re my peoples. I fuck with you heavy. I don’t even fuck with that nigga like that, but he is family. If you kill him, then I gotta go to the funeral. Note: sense unclear; perhaps shading into the ‘like’ sense 2013 “A$AP Rocky” Angles (rap song): If you a trill nigga, then fuck wit’ us. 2017 B. Alexander Glass House 218: Jason sensed that his best chance to cut a deal was to make the Mexicans sound as major league as he was trying to make himself…. “Those people I fuck with, they’re not little shit.” 2021 “Nardo Wick” Who Want Smoke? (rap song): We don’t fuck with jakes [sc. police].

b.🆕 Originally in African-American use: (of a thing) to deal with; to use; to partake of; to engage with.

1989 “Geto Boys” Talkin’ Loud Ain’t Saying Nothin (rap song): Say you’re scorin’ keys [sc. kilograms] when you’re fuckin’ with eighths. 1992 “Dr. Dre” Deep Cover (rap song): “Hit this motherfucker [sc. a crack pipe], G!” “No, naw, man, I can’t fuck with that.” 1998 “Ice Cube” Greed (rap song): Got twenties [sc. twenty-inch wheels] on my BM [sc. a BMW automobile], you still fuckin’ with a GM [sc. a General Motors automobile]. 2013 “Lorde” Tennis Court (pop. song): How can I fuck with the fun again, when I’m known? 2017 B. Alexander Glass House 218: “It ain’t no little shit!” he said of the Mexicans. “They fuck with dope, they fuck with ice.” 2017 “Charlamagne tha God” Black Privilege 173: The production value might not have been great…but the product was still good enough. People fucked with it and the episodes began to rack up respectable numbers on YouTube. 2023 Hysteria (podcast) (episode 238) (Feb. 23) (transcription): I see a green dessert, and when I was younger I would say pistachio or GTFO…. As I’ve gotten older, my palate has become more refined…. If it is key lime, I could even fuck with the key lime.

c.🆕 Originally in African-American use: to appreciate; to like or enjoy; to respect.

1994 Vibe (Aug.) 122: B: I used to like this song. Q [sc. Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest]: Who was that? B: Modern English. Q: Sounds like Modern Bullshit. I can’t fuck with it. If it had some soul to it, I could. 2013 “Tyler, the Creator” in Rolling Stone (Apr. 11) 27/2: That was awesome. I fuck with Miley. I wish more people would like her. 2013 E. Huang Fresh off the Boat x. 158: “Yo, that article was powerful, man!”…“Respect! I’m glad you fuck with it.” 2016 OC Weekly (Dec. 9) 28/1: Unfortunately, if I say Orange County, I immediately get typecasted. So, I’m Like, “I’m from Santa Ana,” and it took a long time for people to be like, “Oh, I fuck with Santa Ana.” 2017 A. Thomas Hate U Give v. 79: Before Khalil, I planned to cold-shoulder Chris with a sting more powerful than a nineties R&B breakup song. But after Khalil I’m more like a Taylor Swift song. (No shade, I fucks with Tay-Tay, but she doesn’t serve like nineties R&B on the angry-girlfriend scale.) 2022 S. T. Conroe Fuccboi 71: I’d been working on a query for days and had homed in on three agents who seemed like they might fuck with it. Who represented authors I fucked with. [Ibid. 118] Sounded like he really didn’t fuck with me. Really hated me. Like personally.

https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2024/11/05/to-fuck-with-an-excerpt-from-the-f-word-fourth-edition/

#000000 #993300 #fuckWith #JesseSheidlower #TheFWord