The F Word

Yes. The actual F word. Not some other word beginning with F that I have decided to call the F word in order to get your attention. The word arose over the weekend and got me thinking. I was home, in the cities, with my fiancé, at lunch with our mothers, before heading to the catering meeting for our wedding. Dawn, my future mother-in-law (not to be confused with Dawn, my mother – both share the name) was reading aloud from the caterer’s menu. She said something about “vegetables: chef’s choice,” and the word came up. Yes, I said it in front of my mother and future mother-in-law. Let me preface, to ease my ethos.

Certain things agitate me, some more than others. Some mundane, trivial, unimportant things lend rise to such indignation that I lash out at them. It is an issue I am working on. However, the idea of a chef picking the food (even a side dish, vegetables) on our wedding day infuriated me. I spoke on instinct, before I could catch my tongue or filter my language: “That’s fucking stupid,” I said to gasps from my audience. I felt like Ralphie in A Christmas Story dropping the lug nuts, only time didn’t slow down as I said it – it sped up. There were no repercussions; a quick chastising about picking my battles, an apology from me, and all was well.

My parents are fairly conservative when it comes to swearing. After the incident I raised the topic with my parents and was informed that when they were growing up only sailors and criminals used the F word. Needless to say, America today views the word quite differently. In fact, the whole situation made me think of a YouTube video I once saw, which I will post below after warning my readers that the content is definitely Not Safe For Work (NSFW): it repeats the word often throughout the two and a half minute clip. You can find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCcCzj_yRtk

The tone of the video is noteworthy: the educational voice over black and white images gives it the sense of a war propaganda movie; but more importantly are the misspelled words throughout. Even as the voiceover expertly explicates the multi-modal uses of the flexible F word, the text contradicts the authority by showing words like: centence, disatisfaction, and incompitance. So when the voice instructs the viewer to use the word more often, saying “it will identify the quality of your character immediately” the tone is clarified as ironic (had the content not already proven otherwise).

One of the curiosities of the video is the etymology of the F word, which the viewer is told derives from the German word frichen, to strike. I had always heard that the word was an acronym Fornication Under Carnal Knowledge – but that could very easily be an urban legend (no entry in Snopes to verify it). The video, and the incident earlier, made me wonder what freshman would think if shown the YouTube. Would they catch the misspellings? Would they be offended? Would they think people say the F word nowadays too much? Or is it part of modern colloquial English? If nothing else, it would be interesting examining the flexibility of the word as explained in the video. It could provide a good grammar lesson.