fuck-off

I had thought that we had written all there was to say at the entry for fuck in the Macquarie Dictionary after many rewrites and revisions, but no — there is more.  We do have the phrasal verb fuck off covered.  It means ‘to go away’ but, used imperatively, it is a harsh dismissal.

In British English this developed in the 1990s into a compound adjective fuck-off meaning ‘dismissive, hostile’, as in I was given a fuck-off look. A person described as fuck-off is thought to be arrogant.

Towards the end of the decade the meaning slid from ‘arrogant or hostile’ to ‘impressive’.  A fuck-off mansion is one that is so big that it tells ordinary mortals to just go away.  It is very showy, very impressive.

There is some evidence for the first meaning of fuck-off in Australian English but we seem to have really taken to the second use of the word. In earlier times we might have used kick-arse or crash-hot or gnarly or grouse, or, even earlier, bonzer.  But now it is fuck-off.  At a BBQ recently I heard a reference to a fuck-off hamburger. I looked at it with new respect.