In another thread, a poster describes being shot by a BB gun as “Hurt like a motherfucker, drew a little blood, but no lasting damage.”
This phrase made me curious as to how a word describing someone who has sex with his mother morphs into a (fairly mild) expletive.
This appears to be uniquely American and would be considered highly offensive here in the UK - can anyone explain?
There are many uses of the word “motherfucker” which don’t mean anything about sex with one’s mother.
Jesse Sheidlower (of the OED), in his wonderful book “The F Word,” list this useage as “4. used as an indefinite standard of comparison.”
Almost certainly US.
Yeah, but on the other hand, you guys tend to use (the media would have me believe) cunt pretty freely, which over here is on many people’s list of Unforgivable Curses.
It may be US in origin, but it does get used in Britain, and even the abbreviated version “mother” (or “mutha”). My elderly British mother asked me, in some puzzlement, about how it was that the innocuous or even, in most contexts, positive word “mother” seemed to sometimes be used as a swear word. I thought it best not to try to explain.
That reminds me of the time my wife asked me, in front of of our young daughters, if I knew what the word “milf” meant. I said “Yes,” (and walked away).
Do hospitals still ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10?
“Hurts like a bitch”
“Hurts like a motherfucker”
“Hurts like a false accusation of child molestation.”
Shut yo’ mouth.
The proper phrase comes from getting hit on the head with a toy airplane. The worst were German World War 1 planes, thus the phrase “Hurt like a model Fokker.”
I don’t think that’s true. The C word is addressed to a specific individual to describe their behavior. The word motherfucker can be applied to just about any person, place, thing, or situation. It can be addressed to oneself merely to express frustration or dissatisfaction. Just about any conceivable sentence can be enhanced with the word motherfucker.
May seem like it, but certainly not in the circles I mix in. It still has shock value when used on radio or TV, and the mainstream printed media will always *** it out, as do many forums.
The same way any word or phrase used as an intensifier or interjection can be thus used. Why the fuck do you ask? 
“Hurts like hell.”
“I feel like shit.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
“And then the cocksucker hit me.”
None of these are meant to be taken literally, and they’re often meaningless literally. It’s cussing. It’s idiom.
Again - not where I come from. It would generally be seen as a word used by people originating from the Caribbean, and those who, for some reason, see it as cool to emulate them.
Not sure if you’re trying to explain the British usage or not, but I agree with KneadToKnow. The British usage of the epitaph ‘cunt’ is bewildering to Americans for two reasons:
[ol]
[li]Brits seem to apply it to men & women equally[/li][li]It use doesn’t have the impact it does here[/li][/ol]
In America cunt is a 100% female-only word. Calling a guy a ‘stupid cunt’ wouldn’t be insulting so much as confusing, almost to the point of being funny. Plus in America the insult ‘cunt’ is to women what ‘nigger’ is to blacks. It is about the strongest insult possible. Way, *way *more than motherfucker (which has essentially become a cliche word here).
I do realise that it is not meant to be taken literally. Bastard, wanker, fucker and other insults are freely bandied about without intention to be taken literally. Of your four examples, the last is American and would not be heard this side of the Atlantic.
The English language is excellent at intensifiers, and uses them everywhere even when they don’t make sense.
As hell is an intensifier. We say hot as hell, and that was probably the original. But we also say cold as hell. That makes no sense unless “as hell” means nothing more than “to an extreme degree”. It does, which makes cold as hell a witty comment on a familiar phrase rather than an oxymoron. (Idioms don’t have to make sense outside themselves.) And that allows as hell to be used in any context: hard as hell, stupid as hell, baffling as hell, or even today’s hella good. It’s just a colorful way of saying “very.”
As hell is a pretty mild term these days, allowable except to the most delicate sensibilities. In coarser talk a greater intensifier is needed. So hot as fuck, or “anything” as fuck developed from as hell. This is a constant in language. Intensifiers grow dull with age. Newer, stronger intensifiers always develop. In fact, many older words have forgotten intensifiers that are now an invisible and unbreakable piece of them and the old intensified word must have new intensifiers added on. What’s stronger than fuck? Motherfucker. The word’s literal meaning is totally irrelevant. What matters is its strength as a symbol for extremeness.
I’ve taken a lot of the background for this from Guy Deutscher’s The Unfolding of Language. I highly recommend it. I mean, it’s great as hell and when you read it you’ll be intellectually masturbating like a motherfucker.
Don’t see the similarity. One has deep historical and painful roots, the other does not. But I do agree that “cunt” is more or less acceptable in the pub in the UK, whereas here, it is an abomination only effectually uttered by a man towards a woman, a step up from “bitch”. I would say that “cunt” could be replaced with “cunt-whore” and is likely equivalent to “whore-dog-bitch” which is more common in the Southern US.
I agree. If it’s not extreme or shocking today, it’s because it’s been used so much; and the reason it’s been used so much is because it is, or at least was for a long time, one of the most intense “bad words” most people know.
I see that Wikipedia has a page on the word.
Thread title edited to better indicate subject.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
No, cunt can apply to anything in Britain, and can be modulated with variations, such as: “That cuntish, cunty, cunting, cunted cunt.”, all in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Mostly though it’s said singly under one’s breath when annoyed with someone.
“Cunt” is not thrown around lightly here.
A long time ago certain ladies decided that “those are the two I’m not going to say. I don’t mind ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’, but P and C are out!”
–George Carlin
But I’m talkin’ about Shaft 