“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards”

sesquiotic3 Comments

Remember when vulgarity in American politics still seemed almost surprising? When it was considered noteworthy that Donald Trump swears a lot? When he forced The New York Times to be less tight-ass about censoring swears? When he made headlines around the world by calling certain countries “shitholes”? Well, those days are fucking gone forever.

Or nearly. Because there’s always some new shit. Trump saying swearwords? Yawn. Trump saying swearwords on his social media account? Meh. Trump saying swearwords on his social media account on Easter Sunday in the course of threatening war crimes? Hmmm. And doing so with… suspiciously scrupulous spelling and punctuation (if not capitalization)? Oh, come the fuck on.

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Another freaking f-word

Stan Carey14 Comments

I never fully adopted freaking as an intensifier, euphemistic for fucking, partly because I swear fairly freely, and maybe also because fecking was available in my Irish English dialect. But I like having freaking available, and with its hundredth birthday round the corner, it’s a good time to showcase it.1

Freaking substitutes for its ruder cousin in all sorts of lexical and syntactic contexts, modifying adjectives (that was freaking amazing), verbs (let’s freaking go), and nouns (how is it still freaking January?), among other word classes; it’s also used as an infix (un-freaking-real) and in set phrases like freakin’ A – euphemistic, obviously, for fucking A.

Two frames from a comic. 1. Ned Flanders smiles, his eyes closed briefly as he trims a hedge and listens to music. He says: “I *know* this music must be the tool of the devil, but that *sax* riff is just *freakin’ heavenly*!” 2. He startles, his eyes wide open, his hand raised to his open mouth. He says: “*Golly*, did I just say the *‘f’ word*?”
From “Be-bop-a-Lisa” in Simpsons Comics no. 6 (1994). Script & pencils: Bill Morrison; Inks: Tim Bavington; Colours: Cindy Vance. Editor: Steve Vance

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“Don’t give a f#@&”

Nancy Friedman3 Comments

Note: This post was originally published in a slightly different form on Fritinancy, my Substack newsletter.

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“DON’T GIVE A F#@&” shouts the headline on a two-page ad in a recent Sunday New York Times. Instead of giving a f#@&, we’re instructed to “give an e.l.f.” — to substitute a three-initial brand name for a four-letter taboo word.

Full-page ad from e.l.f. headlined DON'T GIVE a F#@&
“DON’T GIVE a F#@&.” New York Times, November 2, 2025, page A9. Photo: Nancy Friedman.

E.l.f. is a cosmetics brand — the initials stand for eyes, lips, face, and the name is pronounced as an acronym, elf — that calls itself “a different kind of beauty company.” (Where is the entrepreneur bold enough to launch “the same kind of beauty company”?) Founded in 2004 and based in Oakland, California (my hometown!), e.l.f sells its potions online, in U.S. retail chains such as Target, and in brick-and-mortar shops in 17 other countries. The company has partnered with singer-songwriter Alicia Keys on a sub-brand, Keys Soulcare, and recently made headlines for its $1 billion (!) acquisition of Rhode, Hailey Rhode Bieber’s line of “edited, efficacious, and intentional” skincare and makeup products.

How “different” is e.l.f.? Here’s the facing page of that ad:

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Jackson Lamb and the Slow Horses Learn How to Spell Profanity

Michael Adams2 Comments

As dawn rises on Aldersgate Street, small creatures rampage in the trash, and frosty tendrils of winter reach into the London fall. Various occupants of Slough House arrive swearing, as one tends to do if one is seconded to MI-5’s dust heap or, more accurately, reclassified as the very dust. Louisa Guy swears according to the fashion of the day:

“A body’s been dumped in the street. Broad daylight.”

“Here?”

“Central London […] More specifically,” Louisa said, “outside a fuck-off restaurant near the Mall” (RT 143)

Fuck-off stands for ‘you’re too ordinary to be here.’ Roddy Ho’s swearing isn’t about something that happened on the street but instead is merely an interior overestimation of his sex appeal: “Bitch was ripe was how he read it. Bitch was ready” (RT 11). His big mistake, however, is saying the same thing to Shirley Dander, who rightly clocks him — the dangers of thinking aloud.

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A Shit Ton of Infixing and Interposing Lands on Slough House, Everyone Survives

Michael Adams1 Comment

The intelligence officers of Slough House, good at everyday profanity, are proficient infixers and interposers, too. An infixing, remember, is when one inserts profanity into the structure of a word, at a stress appropriate point (unfuckingbelievable); an interposing inserts the profanity between words in a fixed or idiomatic phrase (go to hell < go the fuck to hell). Infixings and interposings occur infrequently in speech, but when it comes to any variety of profanity, the slow horses are well ahead of the common herd.

Jackson Lamb infixes and interposes with abandon. As he points out to River Cartwright, whose grandfather had been a powerful spook in his day, “But no, you’ve got a grandfather. Congratufuckinglations. You’ve still got a job” (SH 37). The infixing drips with disdain for both grandfather and grandson, well-earned in the grandfather’s case — if you don’t already know that and why, then you really need to read the books.

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