ritavonbees:
ineptshieldmaid:
dedalvs:
prokopetz:
morkaischosen:
prokopetz:
I love the phrase “what the entire fuck” because it implies that there exists some scenario that warrants only a “what the partial fuck”.
Similarly “what the actual fuck,” implying “what the figurative fuck” or “what the imaginary fuck”.
“What the actual fuck” is an interesting one because “actual” has so many distinct shades of meaning.
“Entire” generally means “whole” or “complete”, but depending on the particular context, “actual” can denote any or all of “real”, “literal”, “concrete”, “truthful”, “grounded” or “factual”.
Thus, when deriving the contrastive phrase, in addition to “what the imaginary fuck” and “what the figurative fuck”, we could also reasonably arrive at “what the hypothetical fuck”, “what the fraudulent fuck”, “what the fanciful fuck” or “what the counterfactual fuck”.
Language is fun!
It doesn’t work as well if you start replacing “fuck” with mammals, though:
What the actual sloth?
What the figurative ox?
What the entire camel?
What the intentional goat?
These are starting to sound like show names from the 50s and 60s. So not a lame show like Casper the Friendly Ghost, but an amazing show like What the Hypothetical Dolphin. I’d watch that show.
Does it work best with abstract nouns and nouns-formed-from-verbs, I wonder?
What the actual trepidation?
What the figurative terror?
What the counterfactual dance?
I’m not complaining, because it’s funny, but the animal thing was a bit out of left field. It kind of left me imagining that the word “fuck” referred to an animal. “and here, on the serengeti, a herd of common or actual fucks is fighting for survival”