From the Wikipedia entry on "feck."
Feck is a monosyllable with several vernacular meanings and variations [...]
Modern Irish English
Feck as an expletive
- Expletive employed as an attenuated alternative (minced oath) to fuck or express disbelief, pain, anger, or contempt in a given situation [...]
- Verb meaning in Irish slang "to leave hastily"(e.g. "He's after feckin off down the road when he saw the shades!")
Vernacular usage of feck in the expletive sense is syntactically interchangeable with fuck, though it has no sexual connotations. 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". It is not uncommon for school teachers and some members of the religious order to use the word 'feck' as an expletive in Ireland thus demonstrating the word's peculiarity in meaning to Ireland where it does not equate to the word 'fuck' as many people outside Ireland tend to think.
Isn't language fun?
I looked up this slang term after I saw a link on Reddit to a photo purporting to show "an Irish scarecrow." To ruin the joke for you, the link takes you to a photo of a number of bales wrapped in a black material, and the phrase "FECK OFF CROWS" is written in large white letters.
Interesting to me is that many American English speakers will interpret this as vulgar slang, when it is likely intended to be euphemistic (as in the words "poop" or "darn" or "shoot"). Can misinterpretation make something vulgar? Can vulgarity exist without intention, or with the opposite intention?
Certainly you can offend someone without intending to. But arguing about whether language is vulgar or not is different, because the language itself is being labeled apart from intention. Does language have meaning without intention? On the other side, does language have meaning without interpretation? Is misinterpretation just another form of interpretation, and can unintended interpretation lend vulgarity to language?
I tend to think that a wide latitude should be given to speakers when there is the possibility that an extreme interpretation is unintended. And, I think "feck" looks appropriately irritable on the page. And on the bales.
Posted by James at July 2, 2008 3:56 PMAny relation to the word "feckless"?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/feckless
Posted by: Chuck S at July 2, 2008 4:41 PMNot int he sense I am using it. Feckless is, apparently from the Scottish use of "feck" to mean "effect."
So, "feckless" is not having an effect. Useless. Pointless. Worthless.
Posted by: James at July 2, 2008 6:01 PMI'm not sure that considering a euphemism to be vulgar involves misinterpretation of intention. The intention is usually to say (or imply) the stronger word, after all. One says the "softer" word out of habit, or out of a false sense that it matters.
Really, if I say, "Go feck yourself, you a-hole!", is there any sense that my intention isn't vulgar?
I remember a time in college when I said that an exam had been "a real mother." A particularly sensitive friend asked me not to be vulgar. "But, Dean," I said, "I only said 'mother'." "Yes," Dean replied, "but it's what you meant that matters."
The only time I think it's realy different is when a word (often a euphemism) becomes so much a part of our language that most of us think it's just a word, with no baggage... while a few still take it as coarse. You might say, "Oh, M, your room is such a mess. Clean this crap up now!", with only the slightest sense that you said anything strong. Yet there are people, still, for whom "crap" is a nasty word. In that case, your question of who defines whether a word is vulgar is fully operative.
More on all this in a comment on the other post.
Posted by: Barry Leiba at July 2, 2008 9:14 PMI'll add one more thing, on the idea of euphemisms and "bad words". I'll quote the late, venerable George Carlin:
"No bad words. Bad thoughts... Bad intentions... And words..."