Here at Yorkshire Pudding, I have occasionally stopped to consider particular words. This evening I am looking at a word that is used quite commonly over in The Republic of Ireland - mostly as a verb but sometimes as a noun or adjective. That word is "feck".
Of course it sounds rather like "fuck" which is widely thought of as the most impolite word in the English language and the source of much tut-tutting. But "feck" is different from "fuck". It's naughty but generally acceptable. It has a certain comical quality The word owes much to the Gaelic languages of both Ireland and Scotland. In Scots Gaelic, it was originally connected with effectiveness and in that sense is linked with the term "feckless" which is used to describe people who are ineffective or lazy and conduct themselves in a careless, unfocused manner.
My late brother Paul lived in Ireland for most of his adult life and I recall a scene in a busy Dublin pub when he returned from the bar grasping three pints of Guinness. The seat he had been sitting on was now occupied by a wiry little local man who might have been a leprechaun. Without hesitation, Paul said "That's my fecking seat ye little fecker!" After a short stand-off, the little man vacated the stool but soon became the best of chums with my brother. There were more "fecks" and "feckings" but the initial hatchet was soon buried.
Most English people must have first encountered "feck" through watching a bizarre nineties sitcom called "Father Ted". Located on fictional Craggy Island, it highlights the lives of a bunch of Irish priests. The most decrepit of them is alcoholic Father Jack (see the image at the top) who spends much of his time asleep but when he wakes up he is always in a foul mood and his outbursts are laced with "Feck" and "fecking".
"Feck" doesn't sit well on the tongues of Englishmen or English women. The word definitely has an Irish vibe but I have heard some English folk using it in place of its more heinous Anglo-Saxon alternative.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/p9NRuL7
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