The word can have swearing but not genderisation which might be offensive (mother) nor allusions to sexual dominance (motherfucker). Nor, other possibly offensive connotations. It seems that the word is commonplace and people won’t stop using it, so an alternative to the word may be useful. But the problem with alternatives, is that people might not use them unless they carry a meaning that’s attention grabbing in some way, and when it comes to this word it needs to be able to be used in either a serious (non-funny) or comedic way.

  • itsyourmom
    3•2 years ago

    So I go with the “MOFO” is shorter to type and hits the same.

  • andrewEnglish
    3•2 years ago

    Mother/father is inclusive and a drop-in replacement at least syllable-wise.

    • @[email protected]
      19•2 years ago

      …or for an insult so accurately aiming at the person to be insulted like pissing through a key hole from a 11.5 ft distance.

  • southsamurai
    13•2 years ago

    Motherfucker, what the motherfucking fuck are you fucking on about?

    Are you some kind of fatherfucker with this fatherfucking fuckery?

  • @[email protected]English
    42•2 years ago

    Upvoting because this is a a true “no stupid questions” post.

    So… I think you need to look into the social and cognitive nature of swear words. Vsauce has a pretty good primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7dQh8u4Hc

    I think you also need to let go of the desire to be better than common culture, and/or the desire to engineer a better culture from an external perspective. People are gross and messy, imprecise and reckless. It’s what makes us interesting, motherfucker.

  • @[email protected]
    7•2 years ago

    I think the more “valued” or preferred part of an insult is rather its phonetic or expressive aspect rather than the semantic one. Of course the semantic parts plays a role, as well, but the need to use stressed syllables to express oneself, or simply vent out the emotion, far surpasses the need to utter a semantically-accurate syllable or word to badmouth someone or something.

    See here from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

    It is a beautiful insult that can vent out the emotions, or can be used for fun among friends etc. that uses no semantics to insult people, but uses very mouthful words to stress and some unfocused (as in not targeting any types of people) pragmatics, like insulting someone by insulting their parents, and insulting them as such making them out to be not something they are (was an x, smelt).

    So, whatever semantically gender-neutral alternative you are looking for, consider to have a very strong expressive aspect to it that sticks to tongue.

    • @[email protected]
      2•2 years ago

      Jawn and motherfucker are probably the only 2 words I could consider to be general purpose nouns that can be used to refer to pretty much any person place or thing.

      I feel like in the case of MF though, vulgarity is kind of the point, it’s meant to be insulting, whether seriously or playfully. Jawn doesn’t really have that same negative connotation, so it sort of falls short on that count.

      And of course motherfucker has added utility as an adjective by swapping in the -ing suffix. You can have a motherfucking jawn, but you wouldn’t normally have a jawning motherfucker.