Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/22/a-great-fucking-explanation-of.html
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But their examples don’t follow the rule they gave, so it’s clearly not as systematic as claimed. The word “unbelievable” has its spoken stress on “-liev-”, so by their rule it should be “unbe-fucking-lievable”, yet they quote the “correct” infixisation as “un-fucking-believable”, which I can attest to as in use. Likewise the rule would apply poorly, to my ear, to their suggested example “unrealistic”, whose primary accented syllable is “-lis-”, yielding “unrea-fucking-listic”, which is a great example of an autologistic adjective–one that describes itself.
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Bloody goddam freakin’ fuckin’ RIGHT.
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Also explained in video format:
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All I have to say about this is, FUCKING SLAYER!
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One of my favorite bits of humor in Steve Martin’s Roxanne was the line “In a letter I can be… effer-goddamn-vescent!”
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Cali-fucking-fornia
Un-fucking-realistic
Ari-fucking-zona
Spec-fucking-tacular
Hippo-fucking-potamus
Pennsyl-fucking-vania
However, I do very much enjoys these ing-less variants:
Pennsfuckylvania
Hippopotafuckamus
Spectacfuckular
Arifuckazona
Unrealistifuck
Califuckia
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Clearly prefixes take precedence over stress then. It would be rea-fucking-listic but it’s un-fucking-realistic.
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Interestingly enough it should be Penn-fucking-sylvania because it’s a compound word. But nobody thinks of it as a compound word which is why the above sounds weird and Pennsyl-fucking-vania feels much more natural indeed.
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Huh. This is the version I use - I think it sounds better. Neither un-fucking-realistic or unrea-fucking-listic sounds right to me, but yeah, the second is far worse than the first.
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Sounds like Cali-FuckYeah!
Pencil and Vania, right?
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Mastertrumpingbation?
Just saying it out loud improves my vision.
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Be-fucking-thesda. Also pronounced Buh-fucking-thesda.
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This fucking shit is fucking fucked.
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I’ll never forget Donald Sutherland’s turn on Inside the Actors’ Studio, in which he uttered the classic “Mani-fucking-toba.”
Depends on who’s saying it really. I think I stress both roughly equally un-BE-LIEVable
This whole thing reminds me of the rule about what order adjectives have to be in in correct English (which I was never taught, but somehow know implicitly):
"[adjectives] absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.”
(The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth)
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You never explicitly hear the complete chain of adjectives (because it’s pretty rare to stack 'em that high) but you kind of pick them up by hearing set phrases and subconsciously string the full order together.
