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Word of the Week: The etiquette of ‘F’

An examination of the ‘F’ word

 

“F**king amazing” is considered a compliment by the Chelsea chicks that chatter but “f**king cheat” is one that they find themselves often using to describe what’s gone wrong with their relationships. The ‘F’ word is used by such people in many contexts, but one has to ask “When is using it appropriate?”

 

In the course of an evening in a bar in Chelsea, I overheard many such examples ranging from “I’ve f**ked up as I missed my flight” to “f**k you, I want another drink”. Within the same group were individuals who stated “she’s f**king awesome” and others who concluded they’d be “waking up in the morning with a f**king hangover”. The ‘F’ word peppered their conversations and was plainly a staple of their vocabulary.

 

Considered the third most offensive profanity, the ‘F’ word, it turns out, can be applied to all eight distinct usages for curse words as defined by a linguist named Geoffrey Hughes. It has been in the Oxford English Dictionary since 1972 but barred from titles in the United States. The ‘F’ word dates back to 1475 and is plainly something that isn’t going away.

 

We’ll leave the final word with the author Lisa Glatt. In A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That: A Novel, she states:

 

“I like the word ‘f**k’. The word means what it means, but it also means whatever you need it to mean”.

 

 

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