Feck
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Feck (or, in some senses, fek) is a monosyllable with several vernacular meanings and variations in Irish English, Scots, Middle English, and Esperanto:
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[edit] Modern Irish English
- Slang expletive employed as an attenuated alternative (minced oath) to fuck
- Verb meaning 'to steal' (e.g. 'They had fecked cash out of the rector's room.' James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist (1964) p. 40)
- Verb meaning in Irish argot 'to throw' (e.g. 'He's got no manners at all. I asked him nicely for the remote control, and he fecked it across the table at me.')
[edit] Feck as an expletive
Vernacular usage of feck in the expletive sense is syntactically interchangeable with fuck, though it has no sexual connotations (you'll never hear, for instance, the word motherfecker). This includes such phraseological variations as fecker (noun), fecking (verb or adjective), and feckin' 'ell. It can even be used to describe a person: "he's an old feck".
[edit] Scots and Late Middle English
Feck (or fek) is a form of effeck, which is in turn the Scots form of effect. However, this Scots noun has additional significance:
- Efficacy; force; value; return
- Amount; quantity (or a large amount/quantity)
- The greater or larger part (when used with a definite article)
From the first sense we derive feckless, meaning witless, weak or ineffective; worthless; irresponsible; indifferent; lazy. Feckless remains a part of the Modern English and Scottish English lexicons; it appears in a number of Scottish adages:
- "Feckless folk are aye fain o ane anither."
- "Feckless fools should keep canny tongues."
In his 1881 short story Thrawn Janet, Robert Louis Stevenson invokes the second sense of feck as cited above:
- "He had a feck o' books wi' him—mair than had ever been seen before in a' that presbytery..."
Robert Burns uses the third sense of feck in the final stanza of his 1792 poem "Kellyburn Braes":
- I hae been a Devil the feck o' my life,
- Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi' thyme;
- "But ne'er was in hell till I met wi' a wife,"
- And the thyme it is wither'd, and rue is in prime.
[edit] Esperanto
Esperanto usage of fek is comparable to use of the word shit in Modern English:
- Verb: conjugation of the infinitive feki ("to defecate")
- Noun: feces; excrement.
- Interjection: "Fek!" is analogous to "Shit!".
The similarity between the Esperanto fek and the Irish English expletive feck is coincidental. The etymology of the Esperanto fek is traceable to the Latin noun faex (singular form of faeces).
[edit] Sources
- Walker, Colin S. K. Scottish Proverbs. Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited, 1996. ISBN 1-874744-30-0
- Webster's College Dictionary. New York: Random House, 1996. ISBN 0-679-43886-6
- Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company Co., 1913.
- Irish Dictionary Online
- Traduku - Esperanto translation dictionary
- The Alternative Esperanto Dictionary
[edit] Pop Culture
The Channel 4 situation comedy Father Ted inadvertently helped to export and popularise this use of feck through its characters' liberal use of the word. In an interview, Dermot Morgan explained that, in Ireland, feck is far less offensive than fuck.
The word "feck" also frequently appears extensively in the Nintendo 64 video game Conker's Bad Fur Day, in which the word replaces "fuck" in all instances. It should be noted, however, that this substitution is in no way trying to limit cursing; the game itself is riddled with blatant swearing and innuendo. It is not known whether this substitution is due to the nationality of the producers or simply to give the game a lighter mood.
The word "feck" is also used in the movie Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe, as an alternative to the word "fuck". A teen girl (played by Zooey Deschanel) who is angry at her overbearing, strict mother (Frances McDormand) shouts, "Feck you!" Her mother is taken back by this, stating aside to her 11-year-old son (Michael Angarano), "I can't believe she said the F-word," to which he replies, "I think she said 'feck'."
[edit] See also
