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Sunday, December 16, 2012

"Sopranos! In the OED!"

Researching "midget," in the comments to this post, I find one of the illustrative quotes is from a 1998 "Sopranos" script":
Tony: I was thinkin maybe... you're depressed?
Christopher: Me? I'm no fuckin mental midget.
Surprising to find "fuckin" in the OED, just casually dropped in there to help us understand the second part of the third definition of "midget," which is "A person notably deficient in the quality or ability indicated by the preceding adjective."

(Sorry, I can't provide links that go into the OED, but you could buy it: here.)

ADDED: Fascinatingly, the word "fuckin" — according to the OED — predates "fuck" as an English word. It appears in 1528, written in a margin: "O d fuckin Abbot." ("O d" is presumed to mean "damned.") Now that I've looked up "fuck," I like some of these other quotes:
1598   J. Florio Worlde of Wordes,   Fottere, to iape, to sard, to fucke, to swive, to occupy.
Occupy!
c1650   in J. W. Hales & F. J. Furnivall Bishop Percy's Folio MS: Loose & Humorous Songs (1867) 90   Which made him to haue a mighty mind To clipp, kisse, & to ffuck.
Love the double ff. It's so exuberant.
a1749   A. Robertson Poems (?1751) 256   But she gave Proof that she could f—k....
1865   ‘Philocomus’ Love Feast ii. 17   That night I never shall forget; We fucked and fucked, and fucked and sweat....
1776   Frisky Songster (new ed.) 36   O, says the breeches, I shall be duck'd, Aye, says the petticoat, I shall be f—d.
1931   H. Miller Let. 16 June in Lett. to Emil (1989) 133   Tell her to go fuck a duck!
1955   M. Brando in T. Williams Five O'Clock Angel (1991) Epil. 122,   I feel like a bucket of stork shit for having fucked things around so.
Okay, enough of that for now.

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