Motherfucker

Motherfucker is an English swear word.

Origins

The term "mother fucker" refers to a man who has sex with someone else's mother, specifically with a woman in some kind of tight spot (e.g., economically) who agrees to have sex with that man only out of desperation. The woman doesn't really want to sleep with this man, and she isn't a prostitute in the professional sense, but this man presents an alternative to watching her children go hungry.

The term gained tremendous traction during World War II, originally amongst black American GIs, and was applied literally to American soldiers (black, white, or otherwise) in war-torn Europe who would trade food, money, or anything of value for sex with desperately poor or starving French and German women. Many of these women were home-makers whose husbands had been conscripted away, killed, or imprisoned, leaving the women to support the couple's children alone. Many lacked trade skills, and the war damaged the local economies so badly that they had few, if any, alternatives.

So calling a man a "mother fucker" meant that he was A) taking advantage of poor and downtrodden people with no options, and B) incapable of seducing non-desperate women. Anyone with experience growing up in desperate poverty, or who saw his own parents humiliated by circumstances beyond his control, would probably consider that type of behavior to be degrading.

In the last sixty or so years, the term has entered the popular slang as a term of derision ("That guy is a real motherfucker, you know?"). More recently, it has been used as an indicator of extraordinary intensity, not necessarily in a derisive sense, but usually still carrying some implications of harshness ("I fell asleep out in my lawn chair, yesterday, and got a motherfucker of a sunburn.") or intimidating awesomeness ("That Marilyn, he's one baaaad motherfucker.").

Variants

Like many widely used offensive terms, motherfucker has a large list of derivative terms. Motherhumper, motherfugger, mothersucker, motherlover, you motha, mofo, motherflower, motherfocus, ,"Motherthucker", and many more are sometimes used in polite company or to avoid censorship. The participle motherfucking is often used as an emphatic, in the same way as the less strong fucking. The verb to motherfuck has a wide variety of meanings although it is less common.

Conversely, when paired with an adjective and/or the word "one", it becomes a term denoting such things as originality and masculinity.

Usually the word 'motherfucker' is used in place of an adjective in a sentence, like so: That trig problem was a real motherfucker. In this case, it was used in place of the word 'bitch', which is commonplace these days. It can sometimes be used in a variant of Fuck you, i.e., Motherfuck you.

Some Examples Include:

Why did you touch me, motherfucker? Get in the motherfucking car.

Usually it does not mean someone has had sex with another person's mother. Instead it is understood as a swear word, most related to 'fuck'.

Pop Culture

The word appears in George Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say On Television. In one HBO special, he comments that at one point, someone asked him to remove it, since, as a derivative of the word "fuck," it constituted a duplication. He later added it back, claiming that the bit's rhythm doesn't work without it.

Literature

• The Compleat Motherfucker: A History of the Mother of All Dirty Words by Jim Dawson (Feral House, 2009; IBSN 781932 595413) is a history of the word in black culture and in American literature, film, comedy and music.