About the F-bomb. . .

Warning: contains many swear words.

AS AN INFANT, I drank in profanity with mother’s milk.

My father was a union organizer and our home was filled with cheap rye, card games, and men for whom swearing was an integral part of self-expression. At an early age I learned the four-, five-, six-, seven-, eight-, ten- and twelve-letter words (props if you can nail them by letter count), and I’ve never looked back. (OK, I sometimes looked back—at the principal of Brown School, for instance, the suitably named Mr. Brown, having been sent to his office for swearing.)

In my youth, hockey was grad school for the foul-mouthed. Lip-reading an NHL coach on Hockey Night in Canada: “Inter-fucken-ference, you fucken piece of shit!” Or, on a hot mic, Philadelphia’s gap-toothed captain, from the penalty box: “Hey ref, you fucken queer!” Or, on the ice myself, in Sarnia for the Ontario Junior B championship, an opponent, with three inches and forty pounds on me: “Your head’s coming off, you little fuck.”

Cunt still reddens ears (in this part of the world, at least), and cocksucker packs a punch, but fuck, I’d argue, is the all-time king of curses—the undisputed heavyweight champ, the pinnacle of profanity. It’s the Swiss army knife of swearing, able to morph into almost any part of speech, describe any situation, or convey any thought, command, or emotion.

In recent years, semantic drift has robbed the word of much of its force; it’s become almost ho-hum, and many once-proper newspapers and magazines now allow it in their pages. And even the most polite people, who won’t let it pass from their brain to their lips, acknowledge its adjectival power by using freakin’ or frickin’ instead.

Societal values change. Just as blasphemy lost its force in the secular age, carnal vulgarity in the Pornhub era has yielded its must-not-say-it power to words deemed racist or sexist or ableist. You might casually drop fuck into conversation, but you’d better not refer to gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, trans people, Indigenous people, Special Olympians, the wheelchair-bound, the low-IQed, Chinese, Quebecers, Italians, or sex workers by any term other than those most recently sanctioned by the online police. Any deviation is not merely politically incorrect, it’s unspeakably offensive and makes you instantly cancellable.

Some words, spoken aloud, have an inherent phonetic beauty (murmuration, for example, or serendipity), whereas the one-syllable fuck—uttered forcefully and ending with that abrupt, ck phoneme—lands like a hammer blow. If the word still offends you, I must warn you that much more lies ahead (while also noting that you’ve made it this far). My aim here is not to cause affront, or be deliberately outrageous, but simply to recognize the rare versatility and range of three unassuming consonants and the least common vowel.

“The” and “and” are said to be most common English words, but surely fuck and its variants are not far behind. Stream an episode of “The Bear” if you don’t believe me. Watch 90 seconds of any stand-up comedian on Netflix. I will spare you the five-minute scene in “The Wire” in which two Baltimore detectives reconstruct a crime scene using nothing but our word of the day; I offer instead this 40-second greatest-hits compilation:

“Succession” was no slouch, either. The patriarch, Logan Roy, had the foulest mouth of all on that show; but his sons, Roman and Kendall, weren’t far behind, and even their sister Siobhan, Shiv for short, did her best to keep up. Her partner, Tom, was a lightweight, saying fuck a mere 130 times over four seasons.

I HAVE A KEEN interest in language, and I use the F-bomb more (OK, way more) than most people, but I had never fully appreciated its exceptional range and versatility until an Italian friend, hearing me use it on many occasions, asked about the word’s nuances (just as I’d asked him about the equally versatile cazzo, which means cock but can also stand in for fuck, shit, or asshole).

My explanation went something like this:

Fuck - Have sex.

Fuck! =  Oh no!

Holy fuck! = I can hardly believe it.

Jennifer fucks = Jennifer’s down for sex.

Jennifer fucks! = Jennifer’s great!

Fucked = In a bad place, defeated.

Fuck off = Go away.

Fuck off! = Seriously? No way!

Fuck you = Stick it up your bunghole.

Go fuck yourself = Ditto.

Fuck me = Well, I’ll be damned.

Fuck that = No way, don’t go there.

Fuck that shit = Emphatic no way.

Fuck all = Nothing.

Sweet fuck all = Absolutely zilch.

Fuck it = Forget it, to hell with it.

Fuck no = Not a chance.

Fuck yeah! = Absolutely!

Fuck over  = Do someone wrong.

Fuck up = Make a mistake.

Fuck up = Beat on, assault.

Fucked up = Of a person: stoned, drunk.

Fucked up = Of a situation: nasty, complicated.

What the fuck? = Huh?

Dumb as fuck = Incredibly stupid.

Fuckity fuck fuck = Exasperation.

Motherfucker = Bad guy, or just anyone.

Motherfuck = Ditto.

Fuck this = I’m not doing this anymore.

Fuck that noise = No thanks, not happening.

Fuck the dog = Waste time.

Fuck me sideways = Incredulity.

Fucker = An asshole, or just a person.

For fuck sake = Impatience, exasperation.

For fuck's sake = Ditto, for grammatical guardians.

Fuckwad = Useless person.

Fuckwit  = Dummy.

Fuckface = Asshole.

Fuckhead = Idiot.

Holy fuck! = Astonishment.

Fucken A! = Excellent! Right on.

Fucken hell = Goddamn it (in the UK).

Fucken hell! = Really? Fantastic!

Fucken right = That’s for sure.

Fucken rights = Ditto, for those who also say “yous guys.”

Shut the fuck up! = What you yell at the leaf-blower guy.

Don’t give a fuck = Don’t care.

Zero fucks to give = Don’t care.

Wanna fuck? = Wanna bang, wanna have sex?

Fuck with you = Mess with you.

Mindfuck = Vast confusion.

Fuck around = Spend time aimlessly.

Fuck around = Be unfaithful.

Fuck around and find out = Mess with me at your peril.

Clusterfuck = Huge mess.

Like (or The) fuck you will = You’d better not.

You fuck = You prick, you asshole.

Fucker = Jerk, idiot, or just a guy.

Fuckery = Deception.

I got fucked = Ripped off, hard done by.

Fucked over = Done wrong.

Fuck you very much = Thanks for nothing, asshole.

Fucktwaddle = A Karen, or a moron (in the U.K.).

Oh fuck! = Just remembered something.

Royally fucked = In a really bad spot.

Get fucked = Similar to "Fuck off"

That was fucked! = That was great.

Well, fuck = Reluctant resignation.

Well, fuck me dead = That’s unbelievable.

Fuuuck = Commiseration.

Fuuuuuuck = Amazement.

F*ck = Fuck for polite people.

AND LET’S NOT forget the many F-based acronyms my friend will encounter as he navigates through life in North America:

AF = As fuck; e.g., sketchy as fuck.

FFS = For fuck's sake.

FML = Fuck my life.

LFG! = Let’s fucken go!

MILF = Mother I'd love to fuck.

NFG = No fucking good.

OMFG = Oh my fucking God.

SNAFU = Situation normal, all fucked up.

STFU = Shut the fuck up.

WTF = What the fuck.

WTAF = What the actual fuck.

(FCUK = A clothing brand, stands for French Connection UK.)

HOW DID I do with my explanation?

What did I overlook, or get not quite right? Is my friend now equipped to better understand what he hears at construction sites and sports events and comedy clubs?

Is he now ready for a lesson on the second-most-used and adaptable four-letter word he’ll encounter as he navigates life in North America?

Is he ready to talk shit?