Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

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Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

F word

When do you use “mother fucker” and when do you use “mother fucking”? Does the later indicate a kind of dialect?

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As an urban profanity, it is necessarily emphatic. Urban dialogue is rich in explatives. How do you express something or someone that crosses the line? In the hood, where there are few taboos (it's open season for murder and assault, and of course larceny and narcotics trade are viable career choices), you have to illicit the last taboo to push the envelope. On the street, no there is not much prudishness, and fatherhood is not a big thing, but motherhood (we can't escape it) is still revered. The taboo of violating maternal virtue, either of one's own mother, or a mother in general, is still colorful. Thus it's one of the few remaining colorful terms in the concrete jungle, and thus can be an exclamantion point for insults and compliments alike.

Raash Nov-03-2004

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Elizabeth, that's a lovely and sane sentiment, but you're never going to eradicate the fact that the expression actually refers to a son who practices incest with his own mother. Sorry.

speedwell2 Nov-02-2004

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After giving birth and becoming a mother i had the funniest feeling that Motherfucker was no longer a terrible thing to be called.
As a matter of fact it felt as if my lover was a motherfucker and i loved him for it.
Must there always be a negative connotation to this word?

ixchel Nov-02-2004

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errr - motherfucking is an adjective, motherfucker a noun. However, one would hope that you wouldn't use it at all!

Persnickety Jul-15-2004

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"Motherfucker," general-purpose noun for something you're intensely annoyed with. Sounds very strange when used to refer to something or someone female.

Also used interjectionally when intensely disappointed and angry. See "Jesus Christ."

"Motherfucking," general-purpose adjective used to modify something you are intensely annoyed with. Also sounds weird when applied to something female.

speedwell2 Jun-20-2004

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"mother fucking" is used as an adjective describing not just people but cars, cats..

this mother fucking pencil doesnt work!


you mother fucker!
that mother fucker!, or just
mother fucker! as a car pulls out dangerously in front of you.
. . is just an exclamation

oli Jun-18-2004

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