feck

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• Rhymes: -ɛk

From Scots, aphetic form of effect.

feck (plural fecks)

1. Effect, value; vigor.
   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Abacus 2013, p. 64:

     some of which have earned a small academic following for their technical feck and for a pathos that was somehow both surreally abstract and CNS-rendingly melodramatic at the same time.

2. (Scotland) The greater or larger part.
   • Robert Burns

     the feck o' my life

• feckless

feck (third-person singular simple present fecks, present participle fecking, simple past and past participle fecked)

1. (Ireland, slang) To throw.
2. (Ireland, slang) To steal.
3. (Ireland, slang) To leave hastily.

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:feck.

Alteration of fuck.

feck (third-person singular simple present fecks, present participle fecking, simple past and past participle fecked)

1. (euphemistic, chiefly Ireland) Fuck (except literally).
   • 1970, Tim Pat Coogan, The I.R.A.:

     As Charlie Murphy put it to me, 'When the bishops called down fire and brimstone not a man stirred but when Joe Christle fecked off half the shagging IRA followed him!'

   • 2004 May 29, “A real thorn in the side; Profile : Diarmuid Gavin”, in The Herald:

     It didn't stop him turning to a reporter, saying "feck it" and nipping out anyway to talk to friends.

   • 2011 January 6, Erwin James, “One dangerous lady”, in Sydney Morning Herald:

     "My family were Irish," she says, "and the use of the word 'feck' was normal but, of course, as a child, I thought it was a swear word. My first day at Holycross I heard the nuns saying feckin' this and feckin' that and I thought, 'Oh my God, they're all swearing'

   • 2011 January 6, “A year to look forward to”, in Galway Advertiser:

     the year gets off to a flying start when the words 'Oh feck' are uttered collectively by two million as the January wage sheets are handed out and the true realisation of the Budget kicks in