Is the word we all know as the “f” word an anacronym. If so, I was wondering if there were any other anacronym’s that are considered as profanity.
apologies if i mis-speld
Uncle Cecil covered this in a classic column.
Check it out:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_268b.html
What’s another word for euphemism?
I can’t remember the band’s name, but this was covered in a song. “If You See Kay” (Tell her I love her). 
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
As noted above, the first word mentioned is not an acronym.
There are a couple of acronyms that include vulgar or obscene terms (including the above). I don’t know any vulgar or obscene words that are the result of acronyms. (Aside from such drek at PTL or WWJD that have become vulgar or obscene by association. People on the opposite end of the political spectrum might deny the vulgarity of the acronyms I cited while adding their own: e.g., ACLU. Most of us would agree that NAMBLA was an obscenity, but it has not yet become a word in its own right.) Remember that acronyms usually arise among a generally literate population and most of our vulgar and obscene terms are far older than universal literacy.
The acronyms that were created from obscene terms generally belong to the family that began with SNAFU and FUBAR and have branched out from there.
Tom~
How about ‘mofo?’
www.mofo.com= Morris & Foster Esq. I kid you not.
Actually, the acronym comes from the time of Frederick the Great. Servants outside the bedroom one night heard his wife, Brunhilde, exclaim, very loudly, “FRED! You can’t keep on f**king, Fred!!!” The servants thought this was quite funny, but they couldn’t refer to it directly, of course, so they made it into an acronym… replacing “You” with “U”.
This is the truth, I was told it by my cousin’s second husband’s sister’s friend, and he’d never lie. Er, lay. Er…
Few vulgar words are acronyms simply because they are much older than the practice of forming words in that manner. It’s hard for most people to realize (since it’s a common practice today, especially where computers are involved) that the first word created this way was most likely “radar” around 1940.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
I know that things get recycled in here pretty quickly, but this one is super fast. Same question different ancronym less than a week ago:
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/005595.html
Some of us obnoxious little boys back in the 1940’s used to sing this little jingle to annoy the little girls.
Aleister Crowley interpreted fuck as based on the two initial sounds of the Greek words
[symbol]jalloV[/symbol] (phallos) and
[symbol]kteiV[/symbol] (kteis),
which mean ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’.
So, basically, Crowley’s grasp of philology was as poor as his grasp of theology and anthropology?
Heres a good link:
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorf.htm
Lotsa good stuff on this site. This link goes to the “f” page. Scan down to the specific “f” word we’re talking about.
And I thought this was going to be a Van Halen thread.
Cool, UBB links!
Handy -
I work at MoFo. Everyone has fun with the name, it started being used as an abbreviation many decades ago, some people got the joke and others didn’t but I’m positive that we aren’t the derivation of the term!
An inhouse video was produced showing various partners responding to the question “What does MoFo mean to you?” - (legendary service, friends ask for t-shirts, etc etc) and then they took the camera out onto the streets of NYC and asked random folks the same question, got their reactions, then said “What would you say if we told you that’s the name of a big law firm?” You can imagine the answers…
Which one? The National Associaton of Marlon Brando Look Alikes, or the other one?
That is what I thought too, untill I came across the following passage in Take Our Word For It, a normally reliable newsletter on etymology:
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to track it down anywhere else. Could anyone else confirm or deny this very early acronym?
Without acronyms, I think humanity would have killed itself off by virtue of tongues falling out and heads exploding.
See You Next Thursday. Actuall, come to think of it, this one doesn’t really make any sense. Stiill, makes for a great ‘In-Joke’
Jxx