From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Sep 21 2001 - 23:58:15 MDT
At 10:44 PM 9/21/01 -0700, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>It is, to the best of my understanding, a contraction of the expression
>"You bet your fucking ass."
Yes, people wouldn't wish to give inadvertent offense by saying `ass', so
they politely restrict themselves to `fuckin' A'.
In Oz, there's an old expression: `My fuckin' oath!', often blurred into
`oaf'. I wonder if this migrated across the Pacific as `my fucking uuunh',
which then became reclarified as `A'.
Damien Broderick
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