Fuck
Fuck
The word “fuck” has multiple uses. The OED gives us two definitions: “have sex with” and “damage or ruin”. Thus, we have “fuck up”, “fuck about”, “fuck with”, “fuck all”, “fuck off”, “fuck you”, “fucked”, “what the fuck?”, “cluster fuck”, “mind fuck”, “fuck face”, “fuckable”, “fuck!”, and so on. The two definitions are opposed to each other: we don’t normally think that having sex with someone is damaging or ruining them; nor do we think that damaging or ruining someone is having sex with them. The word slides from positive to negative with remarkable ease. Generally, it connotes something not at all good. Its literal meaning has given way to an opposite conversational meaning. All very curious and no doubt indicative of deep psychic currents. However, I am not concerned with such psycholinguistic matters here; I am interested in promoting a new use for the word. I think it expresses our present political moment. Yesterday was a fuck. Tomorrow will be a fuck. The next four years will be a giant fuck. I started using the word this way while being treated for cancer—it was a fuck. Surgery is a fuck; so is radiation treatment—but immunotherapy isn’t much of a fuck (except expense-wise). This usage is particularly useful in the future tense: “That is going to be a fuck”. The meaning is roughly “deeply unpleasant, aggressive, and unavoidable”. Not many experiences qualify for this use of the word—a bad lunch or movie is not a fuck. It has to make an impact on the suffering psyche. It has to hurt; you have to grit your teeth. A visit to the dentist can be a fuck, though it need not be. Inflation is a fuck if it’s high enough. Being sued is a fuck. Is being cancelled? Not really. A fuck has to be extreme, ruinous, spectacular, life-altering. True, there can be minor fucks, like being towed or audited; but the concept is really designed for the big things. Being thrown in jail is definitely a fuck. The word must be using sparingly in this sense or else its impact will be debased. So, feel free to use the word in this way if the spirit takes you. I have the feeling we are going to need it.[1]
[1] Speaking of novel linguistic uses, I said to my son the other day (he is forty-five) that I wanted to go into an English country pub with him one afternoon and whisper “Phasers on stun”.
With the senate and possibly the house too – I would say yesterday was an omni-fuck (in a Scottish accent btw).
Sometimes we have the Big Fuck (like the Big Sleep).
An eye-wateringly fucktastic fuck of a fuck – the sort of spectacular fuck that makes all the other fucks despair as they realise that they could never measure up to, never fucking compete with the total, unmitigated, utter fuck that yesterday was.
It’s definitely my 2nd favourite word.
The word “fuck” is a hell of a word.
It can be an adjective, a noun, an adverb, and a verb, all in one four-word sentence: “Fucking fucker’s fucking fucked,” which might be, for example, the bad news that a car repair person gives to a customer. Or it might refer to the United States after Tuesday’s election.
Life will become a never ending fuck–and not in a good way.
Not just the United States, but Ukraine and probably other nations as well.
Or the Big Lie.
For some people there’s nothing better than a Big Lie to believe in, the bigger the better.