feck

• IPA^(key): /fɛk/

• Audio (AU)

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• Rhymes: -ɛk

Borrowed 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.
   • a. 1786, Robert Burns, The Carle of Kellyburn Braes

     I hae been a devil 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 steal.
   • 1916, James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

     —But why did they run away, tell us?
     —I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had fecked cash out of the rector's room.
     —Who fecked it?
     —Kickham's brother. And they all went shares in it. But that was stealing. How could they have done that?

   • 2009, Julian Gough, Juno & Juliet: A Novel:

     And isn't it pure gangsters run the car parks, the price of them, and security cameras my arse, begging your pardon, sure it's watching videos they'd be, while some scut of a ten-year-old's fecking your tape machine and maybe going back to break off the aerial if they don't approve of your taste in music.

Alteration of fuck.

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

1. (euphemistic, chiefly Ireland) Alternative form of fuck
   • 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!'

   • 1995, Graham Linehan & al., "Good Luck, Father Ted", Father Ted Series 1, Episode 1, Channel Four:

     Father Jack Hackett: Tea? Feck! […] Mrs. Doyle: I'll tell you what, Father. I'll pour a cup for ye anyway and y' can have it if ya want. Now... And what do you say to a cup?
     Father Jack Hackett: Feck off, cup!

   • 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

• eff, frak, frig; see also Thesaurus:copulate or Thesaurus:copulate with

From Early Scots fek, aphetic form of Middle English effect, from Old French effect.

feck (plural fecks)

1. (obsolete) effect
2. (obsolete) value
3. A large amount, or the majority of something.

• “feck” in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries.