Today’s new entry:
fark verb Chiefly Australian. (a partial euphemism, in various senses, parts of speech, and derived forms, for) fuck.
The euphemisms never end, do they? This one is usually Australian, and is found since the early 1970s. Perhaps greater access to Australian texts from an earlier period could push this back, but for now this is the best I can do.
This is a sample definition of one of the many (over 120) new entries from the third edition of The F-Word. In the time leading up to publication, I will be featuring one such entry a day. In the book itself, these definitions will be supplemented with a number of quotations showing the use of the word or phrase (which is the whole point of a historical dictionary of this sort). In other words, this is only a teaser!
This reminds me of Frak!, a crude platform game I used to play on the BBC Micro computer. The protagonist, a caveman armed with a yo-yo, shouted “Frak!” whenever he lost a life. Its Wikipedia page links to some hot game action, including a rude version that replaced the euphemism with the original oath. The game is one of many reasons I could not take Battlestar Galactica very seriously.
But this game came after the original use of (as it was then spelled) frack on the original BSG….
Yes, but I played the game before I saw the TV show.