REVIEW: Jesse Sheidlower’s The F-Word, 4th edition

Dave WiltonLeave a comment
Cover of The F-Word, 4th edition
Buy the book!

Sheidlower, Jesse. The F-Word, 4th edition. Oxford University Press, 2024. 449 pages. US$22.99.

Back when I was a teen, c. 1980, some friends and I were cruising the streets of Seaside Heights, New Jersey on an off-season night. With us was a friend-of-a-friend, someone I did not know. He got into a verbal altercation with some other teens we had met on the street, and afterward as we drove off, he leaned out of the car window and shouted, “How’d you like a Hawaiian muscle fuck?!”

Now, we had no idea what a Hawaiian muscle fuck was, and truth be told, I don’t think he did either. We dubbed him the “HMF Kid,” and the incident stuck with me long after I had forgotten his real name. Over the years I occasionally wondered what a Hawaiian muscle fuck was, but it wasn’t until I had a copy of Jesse Sheidlower’s The F-Word in my hands that I found out. There it was, in print, under the headword muscle fuck, noun:

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What’s your favorite swear word?

Michael Adams5 Comments

Sometimes, people ask me, “What’s your favorite swear word?” I don’t know why. Also, I don’t know what to say. I’m interested in profanity but not especially invested in one word over another. It’s not a competition. They all have their uses, or we wouldn’t use them. I’d have to say something like, “Well, Fuck! is best when I’m frustrated beyond words, and my favorite profane put down is probably No shit, Sherlock …” but it feels like I’m putting far too much thought into a taxonomy of swearing preferences — who has time for that?

Apparently, some people have the time, as well as the concentrated interest in finding a favorite swear word, because in the middle of my “I don’t really have a favorite …,” the questioner interrupts with an enthusiastic, “My favorite is clusterfuck,” or the like. The conversational gambit wasn’t supposed to ferret out my favorite swear word but to allow the other person to share hers.

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“Type shit”

Nancy Friedman3 Comments

This is a guest post by Heddwen Newton, an English teacher and translator based in Germany and the author of the English in Progress newsletter. The post originally appeared on the English in Progress website.

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I curate a newsletter that keeps up to date (or at least attempts to keep up to date) with Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang, and “type shit”, also spelled as “type s”, “type shi” or “type shiii”, threw me for a loop when I found it on this teacher’s ban list:

List of "banned words in class," including bruh . . ., bro, on God, say less, Gucci, rizz, bussin, low key, high key, gyah, finna, and type S___
Via Reddit

Apparently, the young ’uns are saying it to affirm whatever was said before. Here’s an example given by a Reddit user:

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Jesse Sheidlower answers our questions about “The F-Word”

Nancy Friedman6 Comments

Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower has been researching and writing about fuck for a fucking long time: nearly three decades. He’s also been an invaluable resource for the Strong Language blog since our very beginnings (almost ten years!). To celebrate the publication of the fourth edition of his magnum opus, The F-Word, we asked Sheidlower to share with Strong Language readers a bit about the book’s history, his research process, and what he likes to do when he’s not reading and writing about fuck. The interview was conducted over email.

[Read an excerpt of the new edition of The F-Word.]

[Buy The F-Word]

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“[To] fuck with”: An excerpt from “The F-Word,” fourth edition

Nancy Friedman4 Comments

Drumroll, please: The brand-new fourth edition of The F-Word, the definitive lexicon of the English language’s favorite and most notorious four-letter word, celebrates its publication by Oxford University Press this week. Edited by Jesse Sheidlower, who has shepherded the project since its inception in 1995, the new book is an impressive work of scholarship and an essential addition to the bookshelf of any serious swear-lover.

The first edition, published when Sheidlower was 27 and “one of lexicography’s bright young stars” (per the jacket copy), contained 232 pages. Nearly 30 years later, the new edition comprises 504 pages, more than 150 new entries, almost 150 antedatings (earlier appearances of a word or expression), and more than 2,500 new quotations.  

Buy the book!


[Read our interview with Jesse Sheidlower]

What will you find in the new fourth edition? A lot more on fuck with, to take just one example. Fuck with didn’t appear at all as a separate entry in the book’s first edition; in the third edition Sheidlower provided only two senses for the term: “to meddle with (maliciously)” and “to tease (playfully).”

It now has six senses, starting with the nonlexicalized literal sense “to have sexual intercourse with,” which Sheidlower had previously omitted “because, well, it’s nonlexicalized, but this time I felt that people might complain about its absence.” You’ll also find the new sense 3, with three subsenses: “to associate with”; “to use; engage with”; and “to like; to appreciate.” Sheidlower comments: “I think these are interesting, and defining and dividing them up was interesting and challenging, and they go back a number of decades and there are a lot of good quotes from good people.” (Newly added senses are highlighted here, but not in the print edition, with a NEW glyph: 🆕.)

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