Not only is she in his debt, but figuratively, so are you and your father.įurther reasoning along the same lines shows why an insult like father fucker or some such that would be nonsensical a father's fidelity simply isn't as important to the health of a household as a mother's is.

His prospects are dim, and things are so bad in your household that your mother must turn her attentions to another man so that you and your siblings get enough to eat. Your father is pathetic, and unable to provide for you. Because of her sluttiness, your warden of a father cannot be sure that you are his, and thus he will not chance any of his life's hard work on possibly another man's child, an evolutionary disaster if there ever was one. You are illegitimate, and can receive no legitimate property, because your mother is not good enough to make it into your father's stable of wives she's no better than a common whore. Not only does she cuckold your father, but she does so wantonly in marriage, and one implication is that she might too be busy getting some to adequately take care of you and your siblings. He has no idea, or no power, to keep his wife from another man. Insulting a mother's fidelity is so powerful because it lies at the nexus at many of the most fundamental issues that a successful marriage must negotiate - saying I fucked your mother is a many pronged insult that implies a large score of unpleasant things. To appreciate the thrust of the insult motherfucker doesn't require knowledge of the technology, or culture, or local history of any particular milieu the logic behind it is virtually ageless, because it is undergirded by a fundamental evolutionary truth, instinctually apparent to every creature since sex first came about - and that truth is that a mother's fidelity is dear, to both her and her partner, and it is mostly unfavorable circumstances that serve to erode it. I'd imagine that since the dawn of language more than 200,000 years ago, people have been insulting one another by attacking their mothers.

First of all, the germ of the idea behind the word motherfucker is likely very old.

Let's start at the beginning of your questions. In writing the book, the author had access to the Oxford English's Dictionary's archives - the most extensive and renowned of all dictionaries - so what he has to say is likely the final word on the matter. Most fortuitously for you, just a couple of days ago I stumbled upon a book that answers this and most any question one might have on the word fuck and its multitudinous derivatives - anyone who has the slightest bit curiosity about this subject would do well to check out Jesse Sheidlower's The F-word, a very accessible and fun book.

The Compleat Motherfucker by Jim Dawson