Note: This post contains lots of swearing and lots of Whitley Strieber. If that offends you, you might want to read something else instead.
 |
| Well, fuckaroo! |
Those who see the film version of Communion first and then read the book will no doubt be disappointed to discover that, unlike Christopher Walken, Whitley Strieber never actually refers to his alien visitors as "little blue fuckers about that big." (Nor does he ever say "Oy vey, what a day, what a schmear!" Walken's a legit New Yorker; Strieber, a Texas transplant.) However, his books, at least the fictional ones, do contain plenty of cussin' -- and, like everything else Strieber does, it's just a tad idiosyncratic.
⁂
My God, Rollo, Rollie boy, hey, you are one sinister sonembitch.
-- a story anthologized in Murder in the Family, 2002Bats. In your belfry, squeaking like sonembitches
-- 2012: The War for Souls, 2007Tough sonembitches.
-- Ibid.
I've never liked executions. Some poor dumb sonembitch, every damn time.
-- Hybrids, 2011He's a smart sonembitch.
-- The Wild, 2015
Seemingly endless variants of son of a bitch exist, but this one seems to be unique to Strieber.
- son of a bitch (14,200,000 Google hits)
- sonofabitch (549,000 hits)
- sumbitch (261,000 hits)
- somebitch (31,100 hits)
- sumabitch (31,000 hits)
- sombitch (20,500 hits)
- sonabitch (18,800 hits)
- summabitch (11,000 hits)
- sonbitch (8,520 hits)
- somabitch (2,860 hits)
- sonobitch (2,360 hits)
- sonamabitch (1,940 hits)
- sonembitch (68 hits) -- all from Strieber
The standard plural, of course, is sons of bitches, but often enough sonofabitch is treated as a single word and pluralized accordingly.
- sons of bitches (1,870,000 hits)
- sons of a bitch (656,000 hits)
- sumbitches (209,000 hits) -- apparently a kind of cookie, not a swear
- sonsabitches (122,000 hits)
- sons of a bitches (64,100 hits)
- son of a bitches (52,000 hits)
- sonofabitches (13,500 hits)
- sombitches (10,100 hits) -- half cookies, half swears
- summabitches (5,320 hits)
- somebitches (4,560 hits) -- also cookies
- sonabitches (1,990 hits)
- sonbitches (793 hits)
- sumabitches (789 hits)
- somabitches (273 hits)
- sonamabitches (182 hits)
- sonobitches (54 hits)
- sonembitches (14 hits) -- all from Strieber
⁂
"It'd ruin somebody's day, for sure."
"The God-for-damned enemy's day"
-- 2012: The War for Souls, 2007
It's much harder to confirm via Google that this is a unique Strieberism, since lots of irrelevant hits come up ("the love of God for damned souls," "a god for damned near everything," etc.), but I've certainly never come across it anywhere else.
I assume this has something to do with the German word for "goddamned," which is gottverdammt, not far at all from God-for-damned. (Keep in mind that German v is pronounced /f/.) Although Strieber's people have apparently been in Texas for several generations, the surname is obviously German, and perhaps this German-influenced way of swearing has been handed down as a sort of family heirloom.
⁂
Fuckaroo
Hideous stuff [absinthe], but it did pack a pop. He got it out now, unscrewed the bottle, and chug-a-lugged.
Fuckaroo.
He went down to dinner, and ate in silence.
-- 2012: The War for Souls, 2007
"This man isn't dead! This man is breathing!". . . "Fuckaroo, he's right."
-- Ibid.
The word fuckaroo is not unique to Strieber, but as far as I can tell, everyone else uses it as a noun -- meaning, variously, a fuck-up ("a real fuckaroo"), bullshit ("doesn't give a shit about trivial fuckaroo"), or a fuck ("the best fuckaroo I've had so far"). A Google Books search also turns up a Nicholson Baker novel that includes the line "I surveyed the scene for a moment and said, 'Fuckaroo banzai'" -- whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Only Strieber (and possibly Baker?) uses it as an exclamation.
5 comments:
Swearing has always been and continues to be one of my weak points. I used to be a foul language factory, regardless of where I was or what I was doing. I very rarely swear in front of others anymore, but I cuss like the dickens when I am alone, especially when working in front of the computer. In fact, I'm swearing like a sonofabitch as I write these lines now.
Last year or the year before (I can't remember exactly) I made a concerted effort to eliminate swearing from my life. As mentioned above, I succeed doing it in public, but in private . . . well, that's a different story. I used to feel particularly guilty for this indulgence, but I have a feeling God understands.
As far as cussing goes, Strieber strikes me as my kind of guy.
Out of curiosity, do any of you Danube Swabians say "God-for-damned"?
The Danube Swabians cover a fairly diverse group ethnic Germans, but if memory serves me well, I do recall my grandfather uttering gotverdammt under his breath every now and then.
Certainly Germans say "gottverdammt"; I was wondering if you or any other English-speaking Germans you know ever use the anglicized version. Or perhaps the pronunciation is so similar that it's hard to tell.
By the way, I myself come from an entirely swear-free family. I heard my mother say "dammit" once when I was about three or four (and have of course remembered it forever!), but that's it. I've never heard any of my other relatives swear even once. Not until I got my first blue-collar job was I really initiated into the mysteries of profanity.
Sorry, I misunderstood your question. I don't many English speaking Danube Swabians, and the ones I do know are more apt to swear in their other adopted language - Hungarian, Serb, Croat, Romanian, etc. - than they are in English. Most of the Danube Swabians I know here in Hungary can barely speak German anymore. I include myself in this group. I think this holds true for most Danube Swabians, regardless of where they live.
As far as I can tell, very few German swears like gottverdamt were translated into Hungarian. This makes sense to me because Hungarian has an extremely rich and creative foul language culture of its own.
Sadly Danube Swabian culture is essentially dead in Europe.
Post a Comment