The F-Word

by Jesse Sheidlower

Overview

A skillfully updated edition of The F-Word which renders a comprehensive portrait of English's most notorious and colorful word. No word has generated more uses, more creative euphemisms, and more strong opinions than fuck. Jesse Sheidlower's historical dictionary, now in print for over 25 years, charts the uses of fuck and its many permutations, from absofuckinglutely to zipless fuck. It illustrates every sense of every entry with quotations, from the earliest that can be found to a recent example, showing exactly how the word has been used throughout history. This new edition is not just a minor update but a comprehensive revision of Sheidlower's groundbreaking text for the internet age. Major new discoveries push back the known history of fuck by almost two hundred years. Sheidlower also considers rapidly changing attitudes towards the use of fuck in public discourse. The volume includes over 2,500 new quotations; over 150 new antedatings (earlier examples of existing entries, improving our understanding of the word's development); and over 150 entries, including high-profile recent uses such as AF 'as fuck', fuckboi, and the group of expressions of the sort to give no fucks or zero fucks given.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197763353
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/21/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	504
File size:	807 KB

About the Author

Jesse Sheidlower is the editor of the previous editions of The F-Word. He was Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1999 to 2013; since then, he has remained active in linguistic matters. He has served as President of the American Dialect Society, and now teaches lexicography at Columbia University. He has written about language for a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, Lingua Franca, Playboy, Esquire, Slate, Boing Boing, Bookforum, and various scholarly journals, including American Speech, Dictionaries (journal of the Dictionary Society of North America), and The Journal of English Linguistics. He is also the editor of the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, an online resource which launched in 2021.

Table of Contents

Introduction Introduction to the Fourth Edition Acknowledgements The F-Word

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Considering the cloud long hanging over it in more refined circles, the "F" word delights amateur linguists the world over, as they employ it frequently, fluidly, and with great relish. Whether noun, verb, adjective, or adverb, colorful uses abound, and new variations continually creep into the lexicon. Like a mushroom, the "F" word has multiplied in the dark, growing strong, pungent, and resilient.

In The F-Word, author Sheidlower happily traces the humble beginnings and endless permutations of the granddaddy of all English-language profanity. More than a slang dictionary, The F-Word is a proud, uncensored exploration of a short, sharp shock of a word.

Here's a cultural reference point for you: Plug into the soundtrack for the original Woodstock festival, 1969's shining moment of generational unity. Skip over Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, The Who, and even Jimi Hendrix re-imagining "The Stars Spangled Banner." Instead, cue up Country Joe McDonald and the Fish, and check out "The Fish Cheer." A spelling lesson to end all spelling lessons: "Gimme an 'F.'" "'F!'" Several hundred thousand people, giving voice to society's most verboten word. "What's it spell?" Talk about catharsis. Talk about freedom.

And as many imaginative variations you might know, including any longshoremen still out there, The F-Word will undoubtedly increase your verbal dexterity. From one lone syllable first recorded almost 500 years ago, the "F" word has grown into an entire army of colloquial expressions. Ironically, speaking of the Army, the military can be thanked fortheintroduction of numerous acronyms that incorporate the "F" word - SNAFU being the most famous and the most fabulous, as it allows for open understanding without recrimination.

In the second edition, Sheidlower adds scores more examples to the engaging text, rifling the English canon with grand results. For every stuffed shirt who would never dare utter such gutterspeak, some saucy scribe or punny peon has worked doubly hard to use the "F" word in a novel, terribly picturesque fashion. And Sheidlower glories in detailing his finds: the Scotsman's Scot, Robert Burns; Papa Hemingway: e.e. cummings; Jack Kerouac; and many others.

So powerful is the "F" word that a mere allusion will often convey the larger story, a device which allows the fine and crafty screenwriters at "NYPD Blue" to push the envelope, week in, week out. Wonder what George Carlin's thoughts would be on Detective Sipowicz, as Andy foams and sputters and spews and says, "No effing way."

The F-Word. Un-effing-believable!

"The F Word is an astounding work of scholarship...an exhaustive but exhilarating ode to the creativity of obscenity." — Boston Globe

"Lexicography and lexicographers, like great wines, improve with age. Never more so than in this, the fourth revision of Jesse Sheidlower's The F-Word, his incomparably authoritative study of language's most notorious four letters. From the deep scholarship of its introduction to the fascinating range of illustrative citations, this is a masterpiece of its type. Or to suit praise to prose: it's fucking-A!" — Jonathon Green, author of Green's Dictionary of Slang

"On the subject of that prize word of words, here's everything you ever wanted to know, everything you didn't know you wanted to know, everything you perhaps didn't want to know at all (but now you're glad you know it). I giggled, I chortled, I blanched, I blenched, I even gasped a few times. Jesse Sheidlower's exhaustive new edition of The F-Word may strike you as an unlikely candidate for bedside-table permanency, but I'm certain I'll want to keep my copy ever handy." — Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English

"Everybody knows the f-word can serve any part of speech and that we use it with seemingly endless meanings, and all sorts of words — f-words and euphemisms (let's call them eff-words) - derive from the OF. But everybody doesn't know the half of it until they peruse the new edition of Jesse Sheidlower's The F Word. Even if they encountered the third edition, they may not know about the 150 or so new f- and eff-words Sheidlower has uncovered since. The remarkable range of historical quotations in The F-Word shows us just how expressive and essential f-words can be, how they suffuse our experience. Over four editions of The F-Word, Sheidlower has proved that the f-word's story is a never-ending story. I'm already looking forward to the fifth edition." — Michael Adams , author of In Praise of Profanity

"The F-Word is a delight. It's informative, hugely entertaining yet also a work of serious scholarship which treats its subject matter with just the right degree of academic respect while retaining a sense of enjoyably transgressive naughtiness." — Ian O'Doherty, Irish Independent

From the Publisher