As the f-word enjoys a heyday across the US election, a lexicographer who’s researched it for many years weighs in | EUROtoday

It’s a phrase that’s been gleefully co-opted by each side of the political spectrum for his or her most simple rallying cries (F*** Joe Biden. F*** Trump)and it’s having a veritable heyday this week within the wake of US presidential election outcomes – as Republicans and Democrats exclaim the expletive with polar-opposite emotion: F*** sure versus F*** no.

In Germany, one weekly newspaper even went as far as to run a Wednesday piece with a one-word headline that includes solely the four-letter profanity. “F***,” The time wrote bluntly.

Luckily, because the world deems the swear phrase uniquely relevant in numerous capacities after an emotionally exhausting and far-reaching shift in US politics, there’s a brand-new version of a guide devoted to the definition, makes use of and etymology of the f-word.

Originally revealed in 1995, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower’s The F-Word has a brand new fourth version out this week with main revisions addressing quickly altering attitudes in direction of “f***” in public discourse, in addition to pushing again by nearly 200 years the recognized historical past of “English’s most notorious and colorful word.”

Sheidlower — who additionally simply occurs to be distantly associated to this reporter via marriage, a truth she discovered hilarious at age 13 as an solely baby in a family the place swearing didn’t exist — has had an curiosity within the phrase since at the very least first grade, when he went up and requested the trainer what it meant.

The phrase “f***,” he tells The Independent“is something that everyone is interested in, but that, until fairly recently, we didn’t actually know that much about – because really, until the last couple of decades, it was not considered appropriate for scholars to work on stuff like this.

“There were academics who did study it but couldn’t really publish it, and a lot more people who wouldn’t work on it because it would be a career-killer.”

Attitudes have actually modified in academia, media and society; as an professional finding out the phrase’s historical past and evolution, Sheidlower confirms that its use within the political enviornment has certainly develop into “increasingly common.”

“There is a certain coarsening of discourse in the political spectrum lately,” he says, and “we’re willing to acknowledge that this is out there” – whereas, prior to now, politicians’ vulgarity would go unreported, thought of “unacceptable.”

Sheidlower doesn’t imagine, nonetheless, that extra muted attitudes in direction of the utilization of “f***” have eased the phrase’s chunk.

“It’s still something that you don’t want your young children to say or you don’t say casually – because they still do have an impact,” says the editor of the version whose first definition explains “absof***inglutely.” The second-to-last entry is “ZFG” – an interjection outlined as “zero f***s given” and “used to express extreme indifference.”

Abbreviations starting from AF to DILF have been added in between; Sheidlower cites the whole lot from music lyrics to scripts from The Wire in his thorough lexicographical tome.

Researching the historical past of the phrase has been fascinating, he says – and, frankly, f***ing enjoyable.

“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do it in the first place,” he says.

After all, who doesn’t wish to know extra a few phrase that, for many individuals and in lots of conditions, merely appears to be the completely finest summation of affairs?

“It sounds good,” Sheidlower says, musing on why the phrase has so captivated people for hundreds of years. “It feels good to say … you’ve got a hard consonant in there, it’s short, it’s punchy, it sounds like it’s the right thing to say.”

It’s actually been employed fairly ceaselessly in lots of communities throughout the nation – notably within the buildup and letdown across the presidential election.

“There are lots of people who’ve mentioned, ‘Boy, do I need this word this week,” Sheidlower says.

Here are a few juicy tidbits from “The F-Word” fourth edition and the lexicographer himself.

The word has been known and used for centuries – just not necessarily recorded officially

You might use the f-word in pain, despair or anger; maybe you’re a fan of “f*****g” as a descriptor, resembling whenever you’re “f*****g” scared. But how typically would you make the most of that phrasing in a piece e-mail or faculty essay?

“Things that are not written down are things like ‘f*****g’ as an intensifier – it’s not sexual and it’s not threatening; it tends not to get written down,” Sheidlower tells The Independent. “One of the most common or most obvious uses of ‘f***’ is as an interjection, meaning damn or whatever. To express anger or regret or hatred or something like that, you’re just saying ‘f***’ – as many people have been saying this week.

“And the problem with that, that’s not the kind of thing that gets written down much.”

The first recognized look of the phrase in a dictionary got here in 1598, he writes in The F-Word. Other clear proof of the phrase’s utilization in society has been found in authorized paperwork and, unsurprisingly, historic pornography and erotica.

Earlier and earlier written mentions of f*** are being discovered

“Previously, the earliest clear example, the incontrovertible example, I would say, was from the late, late 15th century,” Sheidlower tells The Independent – however now, a “historian who worked on legal records found very clear examples from 1310 of a man with the name Roger Fuckebythenavele.”

No, that isn’t a typo.

“It’s funny; it’s incredible,” he says. “It seems this has to be a joke or misreading or something, but in fact … it seems to be his actual name. His name appears seven different times over the course of almost a year in these records.”

The man was accused of a critical offense which is unclear, however Sheidlower says the title appears to check with both an exercise Fuckebythenavele had tried or trace the person was “so stupid that he thought this is how you do it.”

“If this is true, well, that’s great,” he says. “It’s 150 years before the next earliest example” of the phrase’s utilization.

“This is a recent discovery,” he says. “I mean, obviously, the records have been sitting there forever, since 1310, but someone going in and reading them … that pushes the history of the word.”

Smart-asses have been utilizing “f***” to tug mischief for hundreds of years

Sheidlower writes in The F-Word: “Reporting a speech delivered by Attorney General Sir William Harcourt, the Times printed on January 13, 1882 …  ‘The speaker then said he felt inclined for a bit of f***ing.’

“It took the stunned editors four days to run an apology for what must have been a bit of mischief by the typesetter: ‘No pains have been spared by the management of this journal to discover the author of a gross outrage committed by the interpolation of a line in the speech …

“This malicious fabrication was surreptitiously introduced before the paper went to press. The matter is now under legal investigation, and it is hoped that the perpetrator of the outrage will be brought to punishment.’”

A phone pioneer might have given us historic “f***” clues

“Alexander Graham Bell, of telephone fame, did a bunch of work on other kinds of audio technology … and there are recordings from 1885 that are retrievable,” Sheidlower tells The Independent.

“And in one of these recordings, someone is reciting Mary Had A Little Lamband it’s barely audible … and in the middle of it, there’s some kind of technical glitch, and the speaker seems to say, ‘Oh, f***.’

The utterance is “very hard to hear,” he admits, however appears prone to be the four-letter phrase – “so that’s really important, because … that was probably very common at the time, and it pushes it back 45 years before we knew” the phrase was being utilized in such a annoyed interjectory context.

The forty fifth – and newly re-elected US president – has already made “f***” historical past

The first look of the four-letter phrase on the entrance web page of The New York Times got here on April 19, 2019, Sheidlower writes in The F-Word.

“On being informed that Robert Mueller had been appointed as the special investigator to study Russian influence on the 2016 election, President Trump said, and the paper printed in full, ‘This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f****d,’” he writes.

It seems that he wasn’t, although – and it’s a protected wager that America might be listening to much more of the F-word from voters and officers alike because the nation prepares for a second Trump White House.