Frak!

Word around the water-cooler is that it’s not just geeks using the word ‘frak’ any more. Frak, for that .00001% of the population who don’t know, a cuss word created by Glen Larson for the TV show Battlestar Galactica way back in the 1970’s (the original spelling was ‘frack’ but this has been reimagined as “frak” for the new Battlestar Galactica TV series, possibly to make it more obviously into a four-letter word(?)). The intent was to have what everybody would recognize as a swear that could be used on family viewing television and if translated into English it would be ‘fudge’ or, if one were being particularly grumpy, ‘fiddlesticks’.

Frak was about the coolest word created by Mr. Larson, much better than the unwieldy ‘feldercarb’ and way less annoying than ‘centon’, ‘cubit’, or ‘dagget’, and I’m glad to see that it is finally entering popular vocabulary. In fact, I myself fully intend to use it more than I have been up to now, and I’ll be using the newer and tighter spelling as well.

Unfortunately I will probably be curtailing my use of the Klingon word, ‘Qapla’!’ (success!). It’s been twenty years or so and it just doesn’t seem to be catching on. I don’t understand that at all.

Anyway… Humouroceros