Eff This Book!
Perusing Oxford’s The F-Word

The F-Word
By Jesse Sheidlower
Oxford University Press
$16.95

Ed. Note: the following post contains a number of naughty words, including Fuck, Cunt, and Goat. If there's a toddler on your lap, best to blindfold him or her before reading any further.

Having read Erika's post on the third edition of The F-Word, I was cheered to discover a copy in my mailbox this weekend. "What fun," I thought, admiring its sleek, unsuggestive firetruck-red jacket, its blurb from Steven Pinker ("You'll never hear the F-word in the same way again"), and the Henry IV Part II quotation that opens the volume ("'Tis needful that the most immodest word / Be looked upon and learned"). Also of note: a curiously restrained foreword from Lewis Black (guess we all grow up a bit when the OED comes a-calling); eight (8) pages on variants of the word frig; and a note on "new inclusions" in this edition:

The dictionary text is about twice as large as the Second Edition, and well over 100 new words and senses have been added.... Examples {...} include CUNT-FUCK noun, which previously had only a single quotation from 1998, from a Usenet newsgroup devoted to erotic stories, but has now been expanded into a full-fledged entry, with four quotations covering the range of 1879 to 2002; FUCKWITTED adjective, previously part of FUCKWIT noun but now on its own; FUGLY noun, separated from the adjective; and SPORT FUCK noun, upgraded from the verb.

You get the gist. Of course, what might make a great coffee-table book for Ari Gold is probably just re-gift fodder for the rest of us. Before I unload my copy on an unsuspecting family member (Aunt Penny, you reading this?), allow me to share a number of crucial inclusions (full glosses omitted):

ACRONYMS {FUCKRONYMS?} I HAVE NO PLANS TO USE:

• DILLIGAF interjection
  "do I look like I give a fuck?"
• FTN interjection
  "Fuck the Navy."
• HMFIC
  "Head motherfucker in charge"*

EVENTS THAT I HAVE NO PLANS TO ATTEND:

• fuckerware party noun [FUCK + (Tupp)erware party]
  Especially Homosexuals. a gathering of women for the group use or purchase of sexual toys.
• goat fuck noun
  Especially Military. a fiasco; mess; CLUSTERFUCK. Also (euphemistically) goat dance, goat screw, goat rope.
• fuck-your-buddy week noun
  Especially Military. a hypothetical period during which betrayal and exploitation of one's friends is supposedly encouraged. Compare BUDDY-FUCK.

THE DEPT. OF REDUNDANCY DEPT.:

• cunt-fuck noun
  a sexual act involving the vagina, esp. an act of heterosexual vaginal intercourse.

*OK, might use that one.