A clusterfuck of fuckery

I wrote a book about words for bullshit this year, but I missed some words. I think my most egregious omission was fuckery. That’s a damn popular word for unadulterated bullshit.

A bunch of bullfuck

Writing a book like Bullshit: A Lexicon—a look at words, common and obscure, for bullshit and bullshitters—was fun as fuck, as you might imagine. But one thing that’s not so much fun is coming across words I could have included after the fact. I’m pissed that I didn’t find bullshine in time. I would have loved to include gorilla dust.

Then there’s bullfuck.

Bullshit alert! Self-promotion alert! Also, a new blog about types of BS

I started a new blog Strong Language readers may enjoy: https://bunkandspinning.wordpress.com/

I just wrote a book about words for bullshit. In this blog, I’m going to use my deep BS savvy to look at examples of campaign nonsense and identify whether they are actually bunk, fiddle-faddle, twaddle, truthiness, horse apples, or something else.

Please follow and make suggestions! It’ll be a major league bullshit parade.

You badass motherfurniture: 11 rare mothertrumping words

Motherfucker—the Samuel L. Jackson of words—is one of the most visceral and satisfying terms in English. It’s pretty much a mother joke in crystalline form and is quite handy when dealing with the kind of motherfuckers you can find anywhere and everywhere on this motherfucking planet.

As with all things fuck-related, Jesse Sheidlower’s The F-Word records variations and euphemisms for motherfucker, such as mammy-dodger, mammy-jammer, maw-dicker, mo dicker, mofo, motherfather, motherfouler, mothergrabber, motherhumper, motherjumper, motherlover, mother-raper, motor cycle, motor flicker, motor scooter, and muh fuh. But even this great collection isn’t complete. Folks like you, me, and deranged lunatics on Twitter keep coining additional variations every day—either to keep it clean or make it creative.

Here are 11 euphemisms for motherfucker from Twitter—still the best Petri dish for unselfconscious, raw language. None of these words are likely to ever make the Oxford English Dictionary, but they are still effective tools for evading censors and getting through the mothersmurfing day.

Clusterboinks and clusterfornications: The children of clusterfuck

I love the word clusterfuck. It’s a perfect word for, as Jesse Sheidlower defines it in The F-Word, “a bungled or confused undertaking or situation.” That sums up approximately 91.3% of life.

Much as I dig the original, I’m also a fan of variations. Here are some rare cluster-alternatives I’ve spotted over the years: the children of clusterfuck. Like a lot of children, most are less offensive than the parental unit. But they’re all signs of verbal creativity—and the omnipresence of clusterfuckery.