The F-Word is a book by lexicographer and linguist Jesse Sheidlower surveying the history and usage of the English word fuck and a wide variety of euphemisms that replace it. Sheidlower examines 16th and 17th century poetry, 20th century literature, and 21st century media uses of the word.
The book was first published in 1995 by Random House, which also published the second edition in 1999. Oxford University Press published a revised and expanded third edition in 2009, featuring a foreword by comedian Lewis Black.
The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, commissioned in 1604 and completed as well as published seven years later in 1611 under the sponsorship of James VI and I. The books of the King James Version include the 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of the Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.
A thesaurus or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:
...to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed
A backronym, or bacronym, is an acronym formed from an already existing word. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The word is a blend of back and acronym.
Webster's Dictionary is any of the dictionaries edited by Noah Webster in the early nineteenth century, and numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name. "Webster's" has become a genericized trademark in the U.S. for dictionaries of the English language, and is widely used in English dictionary titles. Merriam-Webster is the corporate heir to Noah Webster's original works, which are in the public domain.
Henry Watson Fowler was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He is notable for both A Dictionary of Modern English Usage and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and was described by The Times as "a lexicographical genius".
A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by deliberately misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo word or phrase to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics. Some examples include; "bar-steward" (bastard), "beach", "beyotch", "witch" (bitch), "corksucker", "cornsucker" (cocksucker), "card", "cart" (cunt), "crikey", "Jiminy Cricket", "cheese and rice", "dadgum", "dang" (damn), "darn", or "gosh darn" (goddamn), "doggone", "f" or "eff", "fack" or "feck" (fuck), "flipping eck/heck", "flip", "fork", "frack" or "frak", "frig", "frick", "fudge" (fuck), "gosh", or "golly" (God), "gee", "jeez", "jeepers" (Jesus), "monkey-fighter", "melon-farmer" (motherfucker), "merde", naff, “shiitake”, "shinola", "shizer", "shoot", "shucks", "sugar" (shit), "son of a gun", "son of a witch", "tots" (tits), "horse" (whore).
F Word or The F Word may refer to:
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal American Speech.
Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford—today published under the short title New Hart's Rules—is an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press (OUP). Hart's Rules originated as a compilation of best practices and standards by English printer and biographer Horace Hart over almost three decades during his employment at other printing establishments, but they were first printed as a single broadsheet page for in-house use by the OUP in 1893 while Hart's job was controller of the university press. They were originally intended as a concise style guide for the staff of the OUP, but they developed continuously over the years, were published in 1904, and soon gained wider use as a source for authoritative instructions on typesetting style, grammar, punctuation, and usage.
Fuck is a 2005 American documentary film by director Steve Anderson about the word "fuck". The film argues that the word is an integral part of societal discussions about freedom of speech and censorship. It examines the term from perspectives which include art, linguistics, society and comedy, and begins with a segment from the 1965 propaganda film Perversion for Profit. Scholars and celebrities analyze perceptions of the word from differing perspectives. Journalist Sam Donaldson talks about the versatility of the word, and comedian Billy Connolly states it can be understood despite one's language or location. Musician Alanis Morissette comments that the word contains power because of its taboo nature. The film features the last recorded interview of author Hunter S. Thompson before his suicide. Scholars, including linguist Reinhold Aman, journalism analyst David Shaw and Oxford English Dictionary editor Jesse Sheidlower, explain the history and evolution of the word. Language professor Geoffrey Nunberg observes that the word's treatment by society reflects changes in our culture during the 20th century.
Fuck is a profane English-language word. It often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to around AD 1475. In modern usage, the term fuck and its derivatives are used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an interjection or an adverb. There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as compounds that incorporate it, such as motherfucker, fuckwit, fuckup, fucknut and fuck off. Fuck is considered offensive and vulgar. In the United States, fuck is often removed from music broadcast over radio. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that usage of fuck is protected under the First and Fourteenth amendments. Instances of public figures such as politicians using fuck often gain significant attention.
Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, editor, author, and programmer. He is past president of the American Dialect Society, was the project editor of the Random House Dictionary of American Slang, and is the author of The F-Word, a history of the word "fuck"; he is also a former editor-at-large at the Oxford English Dictionary. New York Magazine named him one of the 100 smartest people in New York, and he serves as a judge for the annual "literary-celeb-studded" Council of Literary Magazines and Presses spelling bee.
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan is a short work by English author J. G. Ballard, first published as a pamphlet by the Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton, in 1968. It was later collected in The Atrocity Exhibition. It is written in the style of a scientific paper and catalogues an apocryphal series of bizarre experiments intended to measure the psychosexual appeal of Ronald Reagan, who was then the Governor of California and candidate for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.
"O come, O come, Emmanuel" is a Christian hymn for Advent and Christmas. The text was originally written in Latin. It is a metrical paraphrase of the O Antiphons, a series of plainchant antiphons attached to the Magnificat at Vespers over the final days before Christmas. The hymn has its origins over 1,200 years ago in monastic life in the 8th or 9th century. Seven days before Christmas Eve monasteries would sing the “O antiphons” in anticipation of Christmas Eve when the eighth antiphon, “O Virgo virginum” would be sung before and after Mary’s canticle, the Magnificat. The Latin metrical form of the hymn was composed as early as the 12th century.
This article discusses the etymology of the word hippie.
A letterhack is a fan who is regularly published in magazine and American comic book letter columns.
Sol Steinmetz was a Hungarian American linguistics and lexicography expert who wrote extensively about etymologies, definitions and uncovered earliest recorded usages of words in English and Yiddish. A widely sought source on all things lexical, he earned recognition from William Safire in his On Language column in The New York Times Magazine in 2006 as a "lexical supermaven".
Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties is a nonfiction book by law professor Christopher M. Fairman about freedom of speech, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, censorship, and use of the word fuck in society. The book was first published in 2009 by Sphinx as a follow-up on the author's article "Fuck", published in 2007 in the Cardozo Law Review. It cites studies from academics in social science, psychoanalysis, and linguistics. Fairman establishes that most current usages of the word have connotations distinct from its meaning of sexual intercourse. The book discusses the efforts of conservatives in the United States to censor the word from common parlance. The author says that legal precedent regarding its use is unclear because of contradictory court decisions. Fairman argues that once citizens allow the government to restrict the use of specific words, this will lead to an encroachment upon freedom of thought.