Talk:feck

Can anyone provide a reference for to steal. I've never heard it used that way. Gerard Foley 00:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC) According to Wikipedia, it's in Joyce's Portrait of an Artist: * Verb meaning 'to steal' (e.g. 'They had fecked cash out of the rector's room.' James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist (1964) p. 40) --md

I think you should tag the entry with {{rfv}}. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:27, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

My appologies for the accidental edit...still new to this...--172.159.71.7 20:19, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a hell of a lot older than Father Ted. I've heard it since childhood (70s). And as a verb, it doesn't mean to fuck. It can be used in place of fuck as an exclamation. --md

Feck can also mean to throw, and I've heard it used more often in this definition than to steal (although that is still common)...perhaps closer to the english chuck than throw. — This unsigned comment was added by Murphyopalmen (talk • contribs).

There's quite a debate about this word on the discussion page over at wikipedia - I've added the meanings suggested there Dom Kaos 20:41, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Is there any relation for the stealing sense of the word to the Icelandic word fá (get, receive. Past tense is fékk)?

Etymology 3

Do you have any sources to say that the etymology of feck comes from fuck? Anotherdave 20:15, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

No. I see the problem with the "blast" sense, which seems to have a connection with (deprecated template usage) fecks, supposedly meaning "faith", which has a long history in "i'fecks": Shakespeare, Smollett, Dryden. A source pointed to (deprecated template usage) faix, supposed to be "Irish".

OTOH, the full substitutability of modern "feck" for (deprecated template usage) eff and (deprecated template usage) fuck makes it hard to believe that (deprecated template usage) fuck isn't at least a dominant influence on the current meaning. DCDuring TALK 21:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah I know what you mean - though at the same time, they're not 100% interchangable - you can't use feck as a noun, for instance. It's the trouble with slang I guess. Feck was never the same as fuck, but if someone uses it on TV or wherever to mean it that way, then it suddenly does. I guess you can't use slang incorrectly =/ Anotherdave 22:42, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it might be a merger of the old "fecks" => "feck" and "fuck". The Father Ted guys probably were playing with the confusion between the two. See the 1970 quote at feck#Etymology 3 for evidence of earlier use. DCDuring TALK 00:49, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

RFV

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

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Ety 4, meaning "blast". I think there is a quote from Dryden and one from Smollett in this sense. The OED might be help is determining the relationship of this usage to the more recent Irish usage as a synonym of (deprecated template usage) eff. DCDuring TALK 20:48, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

There is also (deprecated template usage) fecks used in Shakespeare: "i' fecks"/"i,fecks" said to be "in faith", often pointing to Irish (deprecated template usage) faix. DCDuring TALK 20:59, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if this helps, but it was used a lot in Father Ted, a popular comedy show in the UK in the 1990s. I'd have thought that was the same etymology as the "fuck" sense, but it may well be citable. My instinct says yes, but haven't tried yet. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:26, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the sense (as RFV-failed as uncited) for now; please re-add it if you can cite it. - -sche (discuss) 03:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)