feck

See also: féck

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɛk/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛk

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Scots, aphetic form of effect.

Noun

feck (countable and uncountable, plural fecks)

1. Effect, value; vigor.
   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 64:

     some of which have earned a small academic following for their technical feck and for a pathos that was somehow both surreally abstract and CNS-rendingly melodramatic at the same time.

2. (Scotland) The greater or larger part.
   • a. 1786, Robert Burns, The Carle of Kellyburn Braes:

     I hae been a devil the feck o' my life

Derived terms

• feckless

Verb

feck (third-person singular simple present fecks, present participle fecking, simple past and past participle fecked)

1. (Ireland, slang) To steal.
   • 1916, James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

     —But why did they run away, tell us?
     —I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had fecked cash out of the rector's room.
     —Who fecked it?
     —Kickham's brother. And they all went shares in it. But that was stealing. How could they have done that?

   • 2009, Julian Gough, Juno & Juliet: A Novel:

     And isn't it pure gangsters run the car parks, the price of them, and security cameras my arse, begging your pardon, sure it's watching videos they'd be, while some scut of a ten-year-old's fecking your tape machine and maybe going back to break off the aerial if they don't approve of your taste in music.

Etymology 2

Verb

feck (third-person singular simple present fecks, present participle fecking, simple past and past participle fecked)

1. (minced oath, chiefly Ireland) Used in place of fuck.

   Synonyms: eff, frak, frig

   • 1995, Graham Linehan & al., "Good Luck, Father Ted", Father Ted Series 1, Episode 1, Channel Four:

     Father Jack Hackett: Tea? Feck! […] Mrs. Doyle: I'll tell you what, Father. I'll pour a cup for ye anyway and y' can have it if ya want. Now... And what do you say to a cup?
     Father Jack Hackett: Feck off, cup!

   • 2002, Tim Pat Coogan, The I.R.A.:

     As Charlie Murphy put it to me, 'When the bishops called down fire and brimstone not a man stirred but when Joe Christle fecked off half the shagging IRA followed him!'

   • 2004 May 29, “A real thorn in the side; Profile: Diarmuid Gavin”, in The Herald:

     It didn't stop him turning to a reporter, saying "feck it" and nipping out anyway to talk to friends.

   • 2010 October 28, Erwin James, “Britain's queen of crime: Martina Cole”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     "My family were Irish," she says, "and the use of the word 'feck' was normal but, of course, as a child, I thought it was a swear word. My first day at Holycross I heard the nuns saying feckin' this and feckin' that and I thought, 'Oh my God, they're all swearing'["]

   • 2011 January 6, “A year to look forward to”, in Galway Advertiser‎^[3]:

     the year gets off to a flying start when the words 'Oh feck' are uttered collectively by two million as the January wage sheets are handed out and the true realisation of the Budget kicks in

   • 2012, Delilah Marvelle, Forever and a Day, Don Mills, O.N.: HQN, →ISBN, page 117:

     And though she had no qualms of submitting to this bubbling desire coiling within her, for she was no prim virgin, she sensed far more than her body was going to get fecked.

   • 2018 April 30, Conor Gallagher, “Vicky Phelan: ‘I’m here to tell the tale. And by God I’m going to take these guys on’”, in The Irish Times‎^[4]:

     “I never thought the problem would be of this magnitude. I really didn’t think I’d be waking up this morning to this type of news,” an emotional Ms Phelan said, adding that “they fecked with the wrong women.”

   • 2022 August 23, Jen Hogan, “Terry Prone on motherhood: ‘I did my best all of the time. I just fecking got it wrong!’”, in The Irish Times‎^[5]:
   • 2023 February 4, Denis Walsh, “After a battle with leukaemia, Pat Ryan is comfortable carrying Cork’s great expectations”, in The Irish Times‎^[6]:

     But if you’re not going to set your own trends, and work to your own team, you’re fecked.

Usage notes

• In Ireland, the term feck does not have a sexual connotation and is not typically used to mean "to have sex with".

Derived terms

• fecker
• fecky

 

Scots

Etymology

From Early Scots fek, aphetic form of Middle English effect, from Old French effect.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɛk/

Noun

feck (plural fecks)

1. (obsolete) effect
2. (obsolete) value
3. A large amount, or the majority of something.

References

• “feck”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC.