Frig, Frigging

Frig is an excellent example of the instability of swearing terms, since in the four centuries of its semantic history the verb has meant, variously and simultaneously, to rub or chafe, to masturbate, to copulate, and to waste time in pointless activity. The participial form frigging has become a general-purpose adjective expressing annoyance or frustration, often used as a euphemism for fucking , since the original sexual sense is now virtually obsolete. There are various reasons for this imprecision. First, the principal original activities, namely masturbation and copulation, have been surrounded by strenuous taboos, which have the effect of drawing quasi-euphemistic terms into the field. Second, the term’s original meanings were not directly sexual but acquired by implication. Third, in common with other powerfully taboo terms, frig and frigging have undergone loss of intensity in modern times, as the original sexual meanings have receded.

The first written example, from John Skelton (1529), refers to a boar in the old sense of “to rub”: “his rumpe … he frygges Agaynst the hye benche” ( E. Rummynge , l. 178). The entry in John Florio’s Worlde of Words (1598) is usually taken to be sexual, although his translation of Italian fricciare is simply “to frig, to wriggle, to tickle.” The explicit sexual sense surfaces in the Restoration, especially in the Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), who uses it in an ironic prophecy of a Utopian time when

School-Boyes to Frigg, old whores to paint.
(“A Ramble in Saint James’s Parke,” ll. 143-44)

More remarkable is the riotous quotation from Ashbee ca. 1684: “All the rest pull out their dildoes and frigg in point of honour” ( Bibliography II, 333). A presumably ironic Indictment of J. Marshall for the Public School of Love (1707) runs: “My lovely Phil. is … so well versed in the various manners of fucking and frigging.” In his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796), Grose gave a typically judgmental definition: “To be guilty of the crime of self-pollution.” The copulatory sense is first recorded as far back as ca. 1610, thus overlapping with the masturbatory sense for centuries. Although there are written instances up to modern times, Random House (1994) notes, “as early as ca.1650 the word seems to have been regarded as coarse and to be avoided.” The expletive sense is entirely modern, the first clear instance being in James T. Farrell’s novel Judgment Day (1935): “Phrigg you, Catherine!” (The classical misspelling suggests that the author had not seen the word.) A pseudonymous “Justinian” in a work called America Sexualis (1938) gave both definitions: “to copulate with … Often used as a euphemistic expletive for the phrase ‘Fuck it!’”

Francis Grose (1785) was the first to record the dominant modern sense, noting that “Frigging is also used figuratively for trifling.” The “verbicidal” use, with reduced force as a mere intensifier, is first recorded by Farmer and Henley in their Slang and Its Analogues (1890–1893) with the examples " frigging bad —’bloody’ bad; a frigging idiot —an absolute fool." This source suggests that the meaning must have been current for some time. This sense is now largely confined to the United States.

Among the other global varieties of English, frig is common in South African English, mainly in the sense of “to frig about.” It is uncommon in Australian English: Hornage included the sense “tired, worn out” in his glossary, but it is unrecorded in The Australian National Dictionary (1988).