F Compositions
Recently one of our colleagues has requested more ideas for ‘F Compositions.’ An F
Composition, for the uninitiated, is a composition of 100-120 F words.
(Forwarning: this article is not for the
Faint Hearted.)
First of all, Folks, I’d like to share with you an F compostion which I Found:
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/the-f-word-grammar-lesson/265578324
UnFortunately, it is being removed from You Tube. So if you can’t get it here please
write me.
F**urthermore, if you couldn’t se e the above clip, or even if you did, you can get
inspiration from the F composition immediately below:
That's Just F**kingly Great: If "F**king" Is an Adjective, What Is the Adverb?
By Roy F. Baumeister on July 28, 2008 in Cultural Animal
"F**king brilliant." "F**king awesome." "F**king awful." "F**king ridiculous." How often have we heard such usages?
To be sure, I am old enough to remember when use of the F-word was taboo in polite company. How and why it has spread through society is an interesting
sociological question (or cluster of questions). There are still arguments and rules restricting its use. (I'm probably getting in trouble with the nice people at
Psychology Today by using the word on their blog site; but my post is precisely about the word, so no substitute is possible.) My purpose is not to debate the
propriety of its usage at all, however, but its grammatical correctness.
Still, let us review the grammatical rules here. One takes a verb (e.g., love, laugh, f**k) and by adding the -ing suffix creates a word that can be used as an
adjective (loving, laughing, f**king). These -ing words are themselves verbs, but to use them as adjectives is permissible. As I recall from junior high school
grammar class, such usages are called gerunds. . . (this composition is continued at the end of the article, should anyone want to Finish it.
. . .
The rest of this quite enlightening article can be read at the bottom.
I would like to list some More F topics:
FOOD:
Finger Food fallacies.
Fried Fish Fingers
Fricasseed Frogs Feet
FUN
Finding frumpy frocks
Farding Female Faces ( it means to put on make up, why do you ask?)
Fumbling for foreign footballs
FRIENDS
False friends
Funny friends
French Friends
Fat Friends
And, finally, Funny false fat Fresh French friends
Are such topics too familiar, too facile or farbissen for your favorite pupils? If so, it’s time to forge forward with more advanced
F words. Here are some that you most likely do not know. fabaceous, fabiform facinorous factotum
fagaceous
fagottist
fakir Falasha falcate falderal, falderol famulus fan-tan farad farceur farcy felucca feme femicide
flatulent frenate frondesce frottage fugacious fugleman fulgent fuliguline fundus furfur furore furuncle fusarole
fuscous fusee fustic fusuma fuzee
And you call yourselves English Teachers! Faaa!
So maybe you need to go back to basics: Here are some illustrated F words for the Foundation Level. You can easily obtain
more:
Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit is a
Fabrosaurus
Fabrosaurus was
small, primitive
plant-eating
dinosaur from
South Africa.
measure of
face
This is a
funny face!
factory
temperature that
is abbreviated F.
Many items,
Water freezes at
like cars, are
32°F and boils at
made in
212°F.
falcon
The falcon is a fastflying bird. It prey upon
other birds.
factories.
fall
Fall is the
fall
If you lose
season
family
between
A family is a
summer and
falling star
group of related
fan
A fan is a machine that
makes a breeze.
your balance,
winter.
A falling star is not a
you can slip
Another
(made of rock and/or
and fall.
name for
iron) which is burning
fall is
atmosphere.
star; it is a meteor
people.
up in the Earth's
autumn.
Here are some F poems that can stimulate frenetic or frivolous composition writing:
Said the flea to the fly as he flew through the flue,
"There's a flaw in the floor of the flue."
Said the fly to the flea as he flew through the flue,
"A flaw in the floor of the flue doesn't bother me.
Does it bother you?"
Five frantic fat frogs fled from fifty fierce fishes.
Three free flow pipes.
Fancy Nancy didn't fancy doing fancy work. But Fancy Nancy's
fancy aunty did fancy Fancy Nancy doing fancy work.
Four fat dogs frying fritters and fiddling ferociously.
Frightened fluffy owls flying foolishly through the farmyard.
Five flashy flappers
Flitting forth fleetly
Found four flightly flappers
Flirting flippantly.
Ted threw Fred three free throws.
The first fast master passed faster than the last just pastor.
There was an old lady called Farr,
Who took the 3:03 for Forfar.
She said, "I believe
It's sure to leave
Before the 4:04 for Forfar!"
Four famous fishermen found four flounders -- flippers flapping
furiously! faithfully following four floppy female flat fish.
You can even get special sites that teaches English on ly through F words!
a4esl.org
Vocabulary Quiz - "F" Words
Click the answer button to see the correct answer.
1. Someone who works on the land, growing things is called a ___
Answ er
2. Something you like the most is your ___
Answ er
3. To apply for a driving license you have to fill out an application ___
Answ er
4. A thick kind of mist for which London is famous is ___
Answ er
5. Someone who acts silly or is a bit stupid is
All this and more can be found, of course by putting ‘F word’ into google.
I would like to Finish today (Friday’s) Fymposium with the following exerpt from a real
newspaper:
You can use the f-word in class (but only five times)
Last updated at 10:03 29 ?????? 2005

A secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers - as long as they don't do so more than
five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on
the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be 'spoken' to at the end of the lesson.
The astonishing policy, which the school says will improve the behaviour of pupils, was
condemned by parents' groups and MPs yesterday. They warned it would backfire.
Parents were advised of the plan, which comes into effect when term starts next week, in a letter
from the Weavers School in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.
Assistant headmaster Richard White said the policy was aimed at 15 and 16-year-olds in two
classes which are considered troublesome.
Farewell.
Silverberg, Kiriat shmona, Feb4.5
The remainder of the article.
Adjectives modify nouns, however, and only nouns. If you want to modify a verb or adjective, you need an adverb. In English, adjectives are usually converted to adverbs by
adding the -ly suffix. "Quiet" becomes "quietly." And with gerunds, "loving" becomes "lovingly."
Therefore, shouldn't the adverb form be "f**kingly?" As in, "that was f**kingly ridiculous."
Obviously (note the suffix ‘-ly'), that's not how people talk. But perhaps they should.
One argument in favor of such revisionist scruples is that the usage of "f**king" as an adjective has not been promulgated by the segments of society who are most concerned
with linguistic purity and correctness. My friend John Bargh, professor of psychology at Yale, contends that use of profanity is often perceived as a signal of lower-class
background. That is how people react to it, at least. If that is correct - and one does associate coarse language more with working classes than with the aristocracy - that could
be a reason that educated and sophisticated individuals should not simply adopt such uncouth and ungrammatical uses.
We may surmise that people from lower class backgrounds are less punctilious about niceties of grammar than people from the higher classes, and so they may be relatively
indifferent to traditional conventions about the proper construction of adverbs. Obviously, they may speak however they wish, but if the more educated and sophisticated level
of society wish to adopt the terms and meanings pioneered by the lower classes, they may need to recognize that grammatical corners have been cut, and they may wish to
adjust and correct their usages accordingly.
Drinking alcohol also leads to increases in saying swear words, not just because drunk people are clumsy and thereby discover or create more occasions to swear, but also
because they become less inhibited against saying things that might be inappropriate. (Alcohol makes you less aware of yourself and of whether you measure up to various
rules, ideals, expectations.) That might also have contributed to carelessness about grammar. A drunken person might skip the "ly" adjective ending, as in "Hey baby, you look
real nice." This is all the more reason that sober people ought to be extra careful to promote proper usage, at least by example, rather than follow the lead and thereby adopt
the norms of speech stemming from intoxication.
Let us turn now from form to content. What is the meaning of the adverb "f**king" or, by extension, "f**kingly?" Just how does something that is "f**king great" or "f**kingly
ridiculous" differ from things that are great or ridiculous without reference to fornication? The dictionary on my laptop offers no definition, nor does its thesaurus have a
synonym. Anecdotal impression suggests that it is often used as a synonym for "very." Something that is f**king ridiculous is somehow more ridiculous than something that is
merely ridiculous, correct?
If that is it, however, let me suggest that that usage seems colossally wasteful. F**king refers to one of the most fundamental, universal, desired activities that is essential to
the survival of the species and also regarded by many as a precious, coveted pleasure. For some it looms as the supreme goal lurking behind many activities, such that men
strive for success in the belief that it will afford them more opportunities to f**k. People risk much in order to f**k, and some people harm or kill others based on f**king. The
intense desire to f**k is complemented by its ugly obverse, such that unwanted f**king is regarded in many circles as among the worst outrages and most vicious crimes.
My point is that f**king is inherently fraught with oodles and layers of meaning. To use such a richly meaningful word to denote something as pedestrian as "very" is to
squander a cultural resource. It could be compared to any huge squandering of a natural resource, such as draining a lake and wildlife refuge in order to provide water for
watering lawns.
The question of what is not meant by "f**king" and "f**kingly" raises the question of what its antonym would be and, indeed, whether it would have a derivative form. If
something is ridiculous but not f**kingly ridiculous, and this were to be worth pointing out, would one say "unf**kingly" or perhaps "nonf**kingly?"
Note that the pseudo-word "unf**king" sounds familiar, but that is probably based on the briefly popular usage of "un-f**king-believable," an expression of intense skepticism.
The "un" in that usage was of course from "unbelievable," and so it should not be taken as an indication of what prefix would negate "f**kingly." One could also propose other
forms, such as "f**kless" to be the opposite of "f**king."
As to what its meaning would be, if "f**kingly" means "very," then the opposite of very is slightly ("not very"). Another line of interpretation would be that "f**king" and "f**kingly"
are essentially pejorative statements, and so "nonf**king" and "nonf**kingly" would essentially convey positive value judgments. Thus, if "f**kingly ridiculous" meant ridiculous
in a bad way, then "nonf**kingly ridiculous" (or "f**klessly ridiculous") would signify being ridiculous in some positive way.
It is the responsibility of those of us who are about the language and its value to the culture to preserve grammatical correctness. Language is our best tool for communicating
and for