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F is for F*%#

Jesse Sheidlower is Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary and author of The F-Word. Recognized as one of the foremost authorities on obscenity in English, he has written about language for a great many publications, including a recent article on Slate. Here, Jesse discusses the criteria for including certain words or obscenities in dictionaries.  Watch the video after the jump.

WARNING: This video contains explicit language.

Recent Comments

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lauren. Lauren said: It's "a fucking." Not "an fucking." You fucked up. RT @oupblog: An fucking video of Jesse Sheidlower: http://bit.ly/8AE4u […]

  2. […] indeed of Germanic, even if not exactly of Anglo-Saxon, origin. (For instance, I am certain that fuck is a late borrowing from Low German.) Thus profanities, from the inoffensive piss to the grossest […]

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