So just how old IS the word “frigging”?

So maybe this won’t be surprising to anybody but me, but the other day I was watching a documentary on the Cuban Missile Crisis and they were playing actual recordings from meetings between President Kennedy and his top generals. At one point Kennedy walked out of the room and one of the generals, upset with Kennedy, made the following statement:

“They either do the son-of-a-bitch and do it right, and quit frigging around.”

Now, I figured “son-of-a-bitch” has been around awhile, but “frigging”? I’d have bet that was a relatively new one.

Well, being the curious world class blogger that I am, I put my crack staff here at Shoe: Untied on the case. Sure enough, within minutes our top intern Jiawei Gu came back with the answer. The word “frigging” has been used as an alternative for the word “f+*cking” since at least the early 1920’s.

Really?

Again – does this surprise anyone other than me? It’s hard for me to fathom people in 1929 saying, “What about this friggin’ stock market crash, huh? I had friggin’ sawdust for dinner last night.”

Learn something every day I guess?