You can also say ‘fucking’ as an adjective in the same way as in English when you say ‘that is fucking ridiculous.’ For example, it is perfectly normal to hear something like ‘c’est fucking dégueulasse.’
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Also, telling someone off. ‘Fucke toé.’
Ahhhh…I love languages. They are beautiful when they get all mashed together.
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Side note. In Haitian Creole you can ‘fuckè’ (pronounced fuckay). It means something like ‘fucker’. Like, ‘that guy is a real fucker. You can’t trust him.’
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Profanity can be categorized into 4 catagories. HFSN. A more anarchic board would allow me to expand that acronym, but I think this one trips up on the fourth/
H-- the sacred
F-- sex
S – excrement
N – ethnic slurs
In “What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves”, Benjamin Bergen posits that different languages emphasize certain categories. Quebecois French and Italian (porca Madonna) are H languages. Cantonese, Hebrew, Russian and most english variants are F languages. German is an S language (‘Sheisskopf’).
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Visiting Peru a few years ago, I took a taxi ride with a young driver whose radio was tuned to the local hip-hop station. I was amused, to say the least, to finally hear uncensored versions of songs that would be end-to-end bleeping if played on stateside radio. One song in particular - it wasn’t this one, but the lyrics and sentiment were basically the same - had me giggling uncontrollably. My driver asked what was so funny; I asked him whether he understood the lyrics. He didn’t, so I explained them… and he turned off the radio, blushed furiously, and crossed himself three or four times.
I suspect I ruined his opinion of USAites that day…
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Fuck is pretty much used the same way as in English but it doesn’t have the same “weight”.
For example, you can say “Fuck! je me suis trompé” (Fuck! I made a mistake) or “C’est fucké” (it’s fucked up).
You’re not supposed to use it in polite conversation, but most people won’t be shocked if you do.
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Nah, you just take the Billy Connolly approach - if you want to be polite just spell it ‘phuq’.
I use “fuck” quite routinely, I’ve been seeking to normalize its use for many years now… 
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I fucking love that ad 
I think @Jorpho was jokingly asking if they meant sealskin, the as the French word for seal sounds phonetically identical to fuck?
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Ceci n’est pas une pipe?
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Ok, but wadding? Skin of seal = peau de phoque. Whatevs. 
BTW, I fucking love that painting.
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Based off my French boss at a previous employer, the same as American speaking people.
I remember one time when I was living in southern France a French girl was practicing her English on me, and told me that I looked like “A great fuck.”
That caught me off guard because all of us in the group were Mormon missionaries (I blame youthful gullibility). The other native English speakers present busted up laughing, and after a couple of seconds she made it clear that she meant that I looked like a big seal.
(Or did she?)
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Once Bergen had surveyed the available data on profanity, he found that “taboo vocabulary” is drawn from four distinct areas: religion, sex, bodily functions and slurs for marginalized groups. He calls this phenomenon the “Holy Fucking Shit Nigger Principle.
From Why You Should Give a Shit About the Science of Swearing | Observer
Well, bordel de merde!
Don’t you just love it when there are two sets of laws depending on who you are? Canada is getting more like the U.S. every day.
I’m not familiar with Bergen’s work, but as an American expat living in France, I am struck by a difference not noted there. Which is that in the US, “Fuck” is the ultimate epithet; in Paris, it is “putain” (whore).
So, in the US, having sex is obscene. In Paris, it’s charging for sex that is obscene.
That’s probably about all you need to know to understand the difference between French and American world views.
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It’s a bilingual pun; the pronuntiation of those words in French is similar to “What the fuck” in English.
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