Comments on: FAQ

By: Jesse Sheidlower

Jesse Sheidlower — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:03:04 +0000

I think this was an unfortunate omission. I agree that it should be in, and I’m not sure why I missed it—I do have a good amount of evidence for it.

Whoops.

By: Darryl Francis

Darryl Francis — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:25:57 +0000

Just finished reading (yes, reading from cover to cover) the latest edition of The F Word. Was surprised not to find JFDI as an entry, short for ‘just fucking do it’. A Google search reveals over 50,000 hits, though not necessarily all clearly having the ‘just fucking do it’ meaning.

I recall my then managing director, back in the year 2000, referring to a particular IT project being “a JFDI project” – in other words, “don’t bother with the formalities – just fucking do it”.

No sign of this in the online OED.

By: Jesse Sheidlower

Jesse Sheidlower — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:05:33 +0000

The earliest example of clusterfuck is from 1965, and not in a context where linguistic influence from the Vietnam war would be likely. Not to mention that cluster bomb itself isn't attested until later than 1965. It's not unlikely that sense 2 was influenced by cluster bomb, but since there wasn't any direct evidence, I didn't think it was appropriate to mention this in an etymology.

By: G.W.Martin

G.W.Martin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:20:43 +0000

Thank you for this most illuminating work. The ‘clusterfuck’ excerpt seems incomplete to me. I’m certain that this word was a product of the Vietnam war. That war brought new technologies into the vernacular, for example, Napalm, carpet-bombing, and of relevance here, cluster bombs. Cluster bombs were much discussed at the time because of their novel and insidious mode of action. The term ‘cluster bomb’ in the hands of the anti-war movement quickly migrated to ‘cluster fuck’ as a way to express outrage at the horrendous damage caused by these weapons. Linking one obscenity with another obscenity was a natural etymology in the 1960’s to coerce awareness.