Check-mate

[angelsrolls]

If you don't believe that, well, check-f*cking-mate.

What does "check-f*cking-mate" mean? Does it mean something like "so be it / I don't care / I don't give a damn"?

Thank you

 

[BobK]

Checkmate is the end of a chess game.

The insertion of a reinforcer (usually a Bad Word) is an informal trick; it breaks a word between syllables: for example Absobloominglutely - that's used in a song from My Fair Lady.


Depending on the context, check-f*cking-mate could mean 'I've won" (as a triumphant chess player might say) or You/they/he... have/has won'.

b

PS etymological note: check is cognate with shah or sheik. Mate is as in matador. Checkmate means 'The king is dead'.

 

[Skrej]

Be advised that many consider the f-word and its various derivatives extremely vulgar. If necessary to quote expletives, it's considered polite to replace some of the letters with an asterisk, such as f*ck.

Back to the original question - inserting the expletive into the middle of the word simply serves as an intensifier.

There's actually a name for the process of inserting expletives into the middle of a word - it's referred to as expletive infixation. It's sort of a special case or sub-class of the general linguistic term tmesis.

 

[emsr2d2]

I know it as tmesis.

 

[BobK]

I wouldn't call it infixation either. An example of infixation proper is what happens to Portuguese object pronouns in the future and conditional: teria is "I would have", but make the object o and it becomes [ te-lo-ia (no diacritics I‘m afraid - I‘m on my tablet). Another example, going back a language or two, is the Latin 'inchoative infix‘ ‘ that makes florere become floriscere (from which we - ultimately - get 'flourish'). There's no direct derivative in English from florere, but our verb 'flower' is distantly related. But you can often find pairs, with the second having the sense of becoming: pubic/pubescent, adult/adolescent, senile/senescent....

I don‘t think a whole word like the blooming in "abso-blooming-lutely" really counts.

But I‘ve had this argument before, in another (pre-Internet) forum. Maybe it‘s another BE/AE thing ;-)

b

PS Tidied up and added to in the cold light of Windows®.