The Complete History of the Word. Yes, That One.
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 21st, 2010
I’ll be doing a pre-Valentine’s Day reading on February 11, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. at Rendezvous, in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, which is in the general Northampton/Amherst area. Come if you can!
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 7th, 2009
Thanks to Language Hat for a thorough review! Will fix those embarrassing typos ASAP….
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 1st, 2009
Not specifically about the book, but perhaps some readers will be interested in this article of mine:
“If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I will die with a certain measure of satisfaction knowing that I put the sentence ‘Butch fucked the mannikin through the hole he drilled in its crotch’ into the Oxford English [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 15th, 2009
The first two full reviews:
Jonathon Green’s review in World Wide Words
Justine Elias’s review in the Boston Phoenix
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 10th, 2009
Yes, today is the official publication day!
That doesn’t mean all that much, to be honest—for most books at a sub-Harry Potter level, the publication date is mostly arbitrary, used as a basis for publicity. As we know, The F-Word has been available for some time.
But we are now officially published. Thus, the FWOTD feature is [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 9th, 2009
Today’s new entry:
artfuck noun
1. an artistic person, especially one who is elitist or pretentious.
2. something (especially a piece or style of music) that is pretentiously artistic. Often as adjective.
A twofer today, as these new senses are closely related. The earliest example I could find for sense 1 was from the 1980s, from Bret Easton Ellis. [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 8th, 2009
Today’s new entry:
DILLIGAF interjection “do I look like I give a fuck?”
One that I had never heard of before, DILLIGAF dates from the early 1970s, though I did uncover a late-60s precursor in DILLIGAD (”…a damn”). It remains fairly widespread, and while it is not frequently found in fiction, it appears to be good T-shirt [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 7th, 2009
Today’s new entry:
¶ fuck this shit (used to dismiss a situation); “to hell with this.”
Dating back to the late 1960s, I did have an example of this in the previous editions, but realized that it was common enough at a set phrase that it should be included in its own [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 6th, 2009
Today’s new entry:
XXXX noun British. = fuck noun definition 2.a. [After an advertising campaign for Castlemaine XXXX beer, having the tagline “Australians couldn’t give a XXXX for any other lager.”]
An exclusively British term (despite the Australian heritage of the beer), this is used euphemistically in constructions of the sort “don’t give a XXXX”. Dating from [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 5th, 2009
Today’s new entry:
fuckability noun ability to be copulated with; (specifically) sexual attractiveness.
While fuckable has been around—in two senses!—since the 1880s, its partner fuckability, while predictable, seems to be a relatively new term. My first example is from the late 1960s, but in reference to a sex toy; the usual meaning, referring to a person’s sexual [...]