Heard this morning on KQED, in an opinion feature about African-American males in Oakland schools, by Pendarvis Harshaw, a teacher in one school program: a report on “I don’t give an f-bomb” and “I don’t give a flying f-bomb” heard from students in the school’s hallways.
F-bomb has an entry in Jesse Sheidlower’s The F Word, of course, but as a (euphemized) mention of fuck, not as a (euphemized) use of it:
the word FUCK or one of its variants or compounds, esp. with reference to it as a shocking or inappropriate term. Often in to drop the F-bomb. (3rd ed., p. 36)
and all the cites (from 1988 through 2008) are for this sense. But Harshaw’s piece has F-bomb (euphemistically) quoting an expression used by people, including high school students, not mentioned by them.
Plenty of cites on the net (14k raw ghits for {“don’t give a flying f-bomb”}), mostly spelled f-bomb. For example,
The thing that REALLY galls the elitists about the South: We Southerners TRULY don’t give a flying f-bomb about your opinion of us. We are very happy with our simple lives and want to be left alone…. (link)
Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t give a flying f-bomb about the games. I can’t stomach to watch such unstructured and talentless basketball. (link)
I don’t give a flying F-bomb what it [a guitar] looks like if it sounds good. I think I’ll have to get the hot pink one so no one steals it. (link)
Pretty much bound to happen. There are a few hits for “oh, f-bomb it!” ‘oh, fuck it!’ and “f-bombing idiot” ‘fucking idiot’, more for “what the f-bomb!” ‘what the fuck!” Even a report of a t-shirt with the legend “F-bomb that S-bomb” ‘fuck that shit”; now, that’s really ostentatious avoidance.
