Coming soon: The Toyota Frak.

hummmmm...

A Japanese BSG MILF bike huh?

Weird how I don't remember frak from the original BSG, which I watched in my boyhood. Any clips of Lorne Greene saying it?

For me frak has easily morphed from somewhat-cute censorship-evader to being completely annoying and overused.

FRELL!

Frankly, I don't think that "frak" has quite the same sonic value as "fuck."

For those of you not familiar with modern Swedish slang, fräck has two meanings:

Positive: cool/sassy
Negative: rude/impolite

@braak: Frak? Braak. Braak? Frak.

Sorry.

@braak: Agreed. The "U" sound allows for a guttural phoneme and can thus pull up emotion from deeper in the viscera. The "A" in frak is up high in the mouth and nose. It's about at par with "Shit".

@bigswingdaddy: "Braak" is actually pronounce "Brahk," which is an onomatopoeic Dutch word for "vomit."

@Jeff-Minor: The "r" sound kind of spoils the smooth transition from front of the mouth directly to the back of the throat.

It's amazing how we give words power.
When I was in school, my drama class spent an entire day discussing the etymology of the word "fuck". My teacher supported the theory that it was an acronym for "fornicated under crown king", meaning "bastard".
I've since then also hear that it was slang used in medieval times, meaning "to hit". ...Thus the phrase, "I'd hit that" brings the term full circle.
It amuses me greatly to think that "frak" could one day become a word that warrants soap in the mouth when uttered by children blithe to the presence of their parents.

@Jeff-Minor: @braak: You two are certainly cunning linguists. (sorry)

@Miranda Kali: What school did you attend? Frakking progressive.

@Miranda Kali: Yeah, the "Fornication Under Consent of the King" is a completely-unfounded backronym. The etymology "to hit," from an old Anglo-Saxon word "fecht," is probably more accurate.

I think it'll be funny when two hundred years from now, people are convinced that "Frak" must be an acronym for something.

@danwaterhouse:
...Oh, cunning stunt.

Several, but to put things into perspective, we'd bum cigarettes from my drama teacher and she'd let us skip other classes in the tech room. I also learned more in her class than all my others combined. She was an amazing woman.

oh here comes the linguistics to spoil yer fun!

@braak: you're right. "frak" is one phonetic segment longer. But it won't elicit the same look from your mom if you say it in front of her. (Well, maybe YOUR mom.)

Dear everyone: guttural is not a good way to describe any sound. @Jeff-Minor: You mean the velar phoneme /k/, which isn't much changed by which vowel precedes it. The /ae/ in frak is a front and mostly low vowel. (actually, 'fruck' would be an easier blend of the two.)

@danwaterhouse: since that is the nine yotto-onth time this linguist has heard that joke, yeah, you should be sorry ;)

@Miranda Kali: Was this in high school? Wow. (Which if I recall is an acronym for Wary of Witches.)

@Transuranic: Yeah, my mom doesn't even know they remade Battlestar: Galactica.

She would be extremely confused, if I abruptly stopped saying my favorite profanity.

"Felgercarb"?I? Laaaaaaaaaame.

My favorite future profanity is "bleep" in Larry Niven's Gil the ARM stories, in no small part because the oldest character, who remembers TV censorship, can't help cracking up when its used around him.

@danwaterhouse:
Yes. I never had formal collage instruction. I dropped out of high school and joined the circus.
My teacher would always refer to me as a "very talented disappointment" when I'd return to visit. To this day I feel guilty about letting her down.

...No mention of "pojies" (sp?), by the way. Anyone know what they are, exactly? All I know is that apparently, they can be blown out of things when using lots of firepower.

@Transuranic: agreed. Thanky for the liguistics fresher. You're right, Fruck works much better. Fruck Frak!

@Miranda Kali: I can relate. I played basketball until sophomore year in high school, then I quit 'cause I was lazy and got my driver's license and just wanted to drink beer all day. One day a couple of years later I overheard the coach telling my dad that I was the biggest waste of talent he had ever seen, that I could have been a star if I kept at it.

Beer: the cause of and answer to all of life's problems.

Unless the Frackcycle flies, I don't want to hear about it.

Hi. Your comment >>>"Frak" didn't make it through to Galactica 1980: In deference to the more kid-friendly time slot of the third season of the original show, even "frack" was deemed to be too risque for the audience. Its replacement in the faux-curse stakes? "Felgercarb"<<< Isn't terribly accurate. There were lots of colonial profanities in the original Galactica - Frack, Pogees, Hades Hole, and, yes, "Felgercarb." "Felgercarb" was in the original series pretty much from the start, though the earliest episode I can specifically remember it being used in was the 4th episode, when Starbuck says "A hot pilot doesn't need all that electronic felgercarb." The phrase "Cut the felgercarb" was pretty common, too. By context, "Frack" meant pretty much exactly the same thing in the old show as it does in the new show, though it was used more sparingly, those being more polite times, I guess. "Felgercarb" obviously meant "Shit." My point being, however, that "Felgercarb" wasn't a new word created for Galactica '80. Thanks, and have a good weekend. Sincerely, Randy "I honestly gasped when I saw the man. Those beady eyes, that prematurely gray coif. He can't be human. How could anyone other than Josh Hartnett radiate so much anti-charisma? Richard Gere isn't so much an actor as he is a vague idea. " ---http://www.pinkraygun.com/2008/05/15/ask-an-amatuer-scientist-the-mothman/

So where do I buy that shirt? :)

The myth I always heard was that fuck was what they wrote on the stocks in which they put fornicators back in pilgrim days. F.U.C.K. supposed stands for "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge."

I'd go with "fark" rather than "frak."

I'm not allowed any felgercarbs, I'm on the frakking Atkins Diet.

@NolanLionel: Having just watched the original BSG "movie", i.e. the first three 1978 episodes, I can vouch that Starbuck says "felgercarb" then, maybe in the third hour/episode.

Thank goodness that word didn't survive. Frak is corny, but at least sounds close. Felgercarb is just awful.

I just got a t-shirt that says "frack you," and now I'm wondering if this is some kind of alternate spelling or is just MISSPELLED??????

@Annalee Newitz: That's the *British* spelling.

Now the only questions that remain, are, is George Carlin going to do a schtick about the words you can't say on sci-fi television, will it take place at World Con, and will "steampunk" be on the list.
...Or does anybody give a frakking bantha's pogees about any of this frakking felgercarb, gorram it.

I was watching BSG with my dad. This was his first episode and he couldnt help but laugh at every time someone said frak. It definitely seems silly if you aren't an obsessed fan.

Also it reminds me of Elliot from Scrubs who always says Frik.

Did I just loose sci-fi hipster points for referencing scrubs?

I don't know, hearing Starbuck exclaim how bad she wants to frak and be frakked was perhaps the silliest moment in the new BSG series.

...

Well, maybe not the silliest, but it's up there.

@HJungle: Yeah, as an expletive, it's clever and effective.

As a verb? Yuck.

@Loserface: Smeg!

"I want to frak you like an animal.
I want to feel you from the inside.
I want to frak you like an animal.
My whole existence is lost.
You get me closer to the Gods."

...Nope. Goth/Industrial just doesn't translate to BSG. (well, not the lyrics at least)

@Miranda Kali: But the Demetrius has a goth/industrial vibe, since its a repurposed vessel and the crew is all sweaty and (as of the last ep) spattered with blood.

Personally I like "Mother Smurfer!"... "Smurf" seems to be as interchangeable a word as "Frak". That said Frak is part of my spell checking dictionary.

Some day I expect to hear Samuel L. Jackson say;

"Get these Mother Fraking Snakes off this Mother Fraking ship!"

When I worked at IKEA, I always giggled to myself when I rang up a frackin' mirror.

@Annalee Newitz: That's the original spelling. Classic, as it were. Or I might be fulla felgercarb -- not, as has been said, a coinage of That Series That Didn't Exist. (Except The Episode With Starbuck)

That mirror always makes me laugh when we go to IKEA.

I'm surprised nobody has commented on frak's most obvious literary antecedent: Fug, from Norman Mailer's "Naked and the Dead." Mailer's publishers pressured him to come up with an alternative to the real "f word," and Mailer did it, despite his misgivings. It's jarring on the page, since it's so obviously the literary equivalent of a bleep. Frak at least can be justified as a colonial corruption of an ancient Earth term; fug is just plain fugged up.
-Marc Perton

I always saw "felgercarb" as being "bullshit". I know of at least one instance of someone shortening it to just "felger", but it wasn't used as "bullshit" that time, so I dunno. Maybe the script said "frak" and Tigh just said "felger" figuring one future-curse was as good as another.