I have started to use freakin’ or frigging (instead of f**ing) which is obviously inappropriate in some company.
My sister (not exactly a prude, and someone who curses up a blue streak when the mood strikes) says that she always thought that freakin’ and frigging were also pretty inappropriate words. She said she’d never use them around old ladies, church people, etc. Is she right? I never have thought this. I have never gotten a horrified look from the above mentioned types of people when I say these words.
So, what is everyone else’s opinion? Will old ladies swoon if I say “freaking” in front of them?
Offense is in the ear of the beholder. I probably wouldn’t say “freaking” or “sucks” or similar words around the geriatrics at church, but would say it without hesitation around the high schoolers there.
Well, perhaps the British Dopers can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe “frigging” at least, is a sexual vulgarism in British English. Either that or the Sex Pistols song “Frigging in the Rigging” is a lot tamer than I thought .
At the in-patient unit I work at, we don’t let the kids use "Freakin’ " or "Friggin’ ". We know what they mean, and they know it too. Kids who spout off alot of ‘f**ks’ when they first arrive on the unit are the ones who tend to use these terms the most. And they get just as mad when we call them on using them, too, I might add.
Yeah, it all depends on who you’re talking to. If I say crap or gosh in front of my mom-in-law, you would have thought that I had slapped her face from her reaction.
I don’t let my son use the words. To me they’re implying the other word. For a youngster to use the words, it seems almost as disrespectful as using the actual word implied. But…admittedly, I’ve used them myself (all 3 of them) and I don’t often hesitate to use them around my friends. However, I wouldn’t use them around, say, my mother, who takes high offense to the use of any of the F-words, or around my kids. I try to teach by example. Sometimes I’m just not very good at it. :o
Frigging, as noted, has long meant sexual rubbing or masturbation. It was generally an “underground” term until James Jones dragged it out into society in The Thin Red Line so that his G.I.s could cuss, but he could still get the book published in the U.S. (He also did use “fuck,” but more sparingly, so as to stay below the blue-pencil radar.)
Freaking certainly could be a minced oath for “fucking,” but its origins go back more to the drug culture of the late 60s and it thus has a better chance to claim a patronymy of “psyched out” or “high” and can pretend, at least, to be non-sexual.
It looks like “freakin’” could almost “pass” as not too rude, depending on where I say it. (If I say “crap” in certain company, “freakin” is probably fine too.) But “frigging” sounds a little dicey, since some people might be aware of the British meaning.
See, now, this is something I’ve seen elsewhere: second-hand profanity. At my son’s school, they can’t say “heck” because everybody knows it’s just another word for hell.
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