feck
See also: féck
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /fɛk/
Audio (AU) (file) - Rhymes: -ɛk
Noun
feck (countable and uncountable, plural fecks)
- Effect, value; vigor.
- 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 64:
- some of which have earned a small academic following for their technical feck and for a pathos that was somehow both surreally abstract and CNS-rendingly melodramatic at the same time.
- (Scotland) The greater or larger part.
- a. 1786, Robert Burns, The Carle of Kellyburn Braes:
- I hae been a devil the feck o' my life
Derived terms
Verb
feck (third-person singular simple present fecks, present participle fecking, simple past and past participle fecked)
- (Ireland, slang) To steal.
- 1916, James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
- —But why did they run away, tell us?
—I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had fecked cash out of the rector's room.
—Who fecked it?
—Kickham's brother. And they all went shares in it. But that was stealing. How could they have done that?
- 2009, Julian Gough, Juno & Juliet: A Novel:
- And isn't it pure gangsters run the car parks, the price of them, and security cameras my arse, begging your pardon, sure it's watching videos they'd be, while some scut of a ten-year-old's fecking your tape machine and maybe going back to break off the aerial if they don't approve of your taste in music.
Verb
feck (third-person singular simple present fecks, present participle fecking, simple past and past participle fecked)
- (minced oath, chiefly Ireland) Used in place of fuck.
- 1995, Graham Linehan & al., "Good Luck, Father Ted", Father Ted Series 1, Episode 1, Channel Four:
- Father Jack Hackett: Tea? Feck! […] Mrs. Doyle: I'll tell you what, Father. I'll pour a cup for ye anyway and y' can have it if ya want. Now... And what do you say to a cup?
Father Jack Hackett: Feck off, cup!
- Father Jack Hackett: Tea? Feck! […] Mrs. Doyle: I'll tell you what, Father. I'll pour a cup for ye anyway and y' can have it if ya want. Now... And what do you say to a cup?
- 2002, Tim Pat Coogan, The I.R.A.:
- As Charlie Murphy put it to me, 'When the bishops called down fire and brimstone not a man stirred but when Joe Christle fecked off half the shagging IRA followed him!'
- 2004 May 29, “A real thorn in the side; Profile: Diarmuid Gavin”, in The Herald:
- It didn't stop him turning to a reporter, saying "feck it" and nipping out anyway to talk to friends.
- 2010 October 28, Erwin James, “Britain's queen of crime: Martina Cole”, in The Guardian:
- "My family were Irish," she says, "and the use of the word 'feck' was normal but, of course, as a child, I thought it was a swear word. My first day at Holycross I heard the nuns saying feckin' this and feckin' that and I thought, 'Oh my God, they're all swearing'["]
- 2018 April 30, Conor Gallagher, “Vicky Phelan: ‘I’m here to tell the tale. And by God I’m going to take these guys on’”, in The Irish Times:
- “I never thought the problem would be of this magnitude. I really didn’t think I’d be waking up this morning to this type of news,” an emotional Ms Phelan said, adding that “they fecked with the wrong women.”
- 1995, Graham Linehan & al., "Good Luck, Father Ted", Father Ted Series 1, Episode 1, Channel Four:
Usage notes
- In Ireland, the term feck does not have a sexual connotation and is not typically used to mean "to have sex with".[1]
References
- Stan Carey (2021 October 6) “Column: What does 'feck' really mean?”, in TheJournal.ie, archived from the original on 2022-08-14:
- There are significant differences between feck and fuck aside from their relative strengths as curses. For one thing, feck doesn't have sexual uses or connotations. To feck something in Hiberno-English generally means to steal it (see below) or to throw it, often impatiently or casually: she fecked the orange peel out the car window.
Scots
Etymology
From Early Scots fek, aphetic form of Middle English effect, from Old French effect.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /fɛk/
Noun
feck (plural fecks)
References
- “feck” in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries.
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