| mad_eye_moody
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| 251294. Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:25 am |
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I'm not using the word for posterity sake but i just wondered does the above word (omit the stars) actually stand for:
Fornication uteristation carnal knowledge
as my english teacher told me during one of my lessons at GCSE
or should she deserve a QI claxon? |
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| iano200
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| 251306. Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:54 am |
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| She deserves the klaxon, as far as my looking into it goes it came from a Germanic origin. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But it's definitely not "Fornication uteristation carnal knowledge" or any of the other acronyms that have been going around. |
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| suze
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| 251310. Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:59 am |
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Quite right iano2000.
There are several acronymic etymologies around for the word "fuck", and none of them is correct - acronymic etymologies rarely are.
The real etymology of the word is the subject of some conjecture, but the thread starting at post 177721 will give an idea. |
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| gmroughan
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| 251317. Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:11 am |
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I was always told that it stood for
Fornucation Under Consent of the King
that you were supposed to get permission before you were allowed do anything and that a notice would need to be put on a door to prove you had permission......
Or have I just done that general ignorance thing? |
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| 96aelw
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| 251325. Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:27 am |
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| Afraid so. The link above should bring enlightenment. |
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| The Doctor
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| 251398. Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:15 am |
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| on a sidebar, the dutch word for movie is 'film' and in the tv guide they are listed with an F followed by however many stars the critics felt the movie deserved. There was a lot of F*** on TV last christmas! :-0 |
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| samivel
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| 251400. Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:22 am |
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Strangely, the English word for 'movie' is also 'film'.
:) |
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| MatC
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| 251401. Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:22 am |
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That’s lovely, Doctor! I imagine Dutch TV guides are much sought after as souvenirs by anglophones.
(Mind you, I'm old enough to remember when the British word for movie was film ... )
On edit: you beat me to it, samivel! |
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| MatC
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| 251403. Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:24 am |
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| Of course, these days the British word is "meevie," but that's another gripe altogether ... |
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| Efros
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| 251425. Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:30 am |
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There is an interesting movie entitled F*K which blows away a lot of the myths surrounding this most adaptable of words.
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| Sergei
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| 251643. Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:42 am |
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| What did this teacher propose that "uteristation" meant, I wonder. |
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| MatC
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| 251683. Thu Jan 03, 2008 5:46 am |
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It might be a useful service to humanity to begin here a CRAP ...
Catalogue of Ridiculous Anagrams (Phoney),
which would have two aims:
1. To record, and explode (with referenced sources, of course), as many false anagrammatic etymologies as possible (such as Fuck, Posh, etc), and;
2. To search for a live specimen. Is there, somewhere in the world, a genuine anagrammatic origin of a common slang term? |
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| Flash
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| 251699. Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:37 am |
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| Snafu & AWOL, maybe? |
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| iano200
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| 251721. Thu Jan 03, 2008 7:04 am |
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| MILF is one that comes to mind, not sure if this would be true but TV might be another |
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| Sergei
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| 251722. Thu Jan 03, 2008 7:05 am |
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Though you do mean acronyms rather than anagrams...
I think Flash's examples are correct, and there may be more in the Fugazi thread, but you're right in that such things are rare. One reasonably common one is TEFL - pronounced 'teffle' - which means Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
Computing is one field where people seem unable to resist acronyms - GUI, GIF, WYSIWYG, RISC, WIMP, BASIC, BIOS etc. (Though initialisms, where you pronounce the letters out rather than as a word, are even more common.) Whether any of these amount to slang is another question of course. |
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