Do you remember that line in the movie “Pretty Woman” when Julia Roberts meets her friend Kit at the “Reg Bev Wil” Hotel in Beverly Hills and they sit poolside discussing Julia’s current “situation” with Richard Gere? Here’s the clip. It’s only 1 minute 25 seconds long so watch it all for the full effect.

From the ashes, Julia rises, all fairy tale styles, with a bit of an edge. The golden line in this clip is “Cinda-fuckin-rella,” and it’s one of the beautifully written, delightfully delivered lines in the 1990 classic. All the writers did was stick a curse word in the middle of another word, but man it does the job. And so to my great delight, I recently found out that this phenomenon has a legitimate name in the English language. Expletive infixation.

I think we’ve all got the expletive part down. Infix, as you can gather from the context, is the action of inserting a word element (a type of affix) within the base form of a word—rather than at its beginning or end—to create a new word or intensify meaning. A common form of infixation in the English grammar is the expletive. Yeah, I know, right? It’s so awesomely dorky and easy to do. All you really need are a multi-syllabic word, profanity and a little ingenuity. An online publication called The Week asks and answers a great question. “Want to get a bunch of linguists on a problem lickety-frickin'-split? Just drop something naughty in the middle of a word or phrase.” 

Because I’m a curious, potty-mouthed, pseudo-linguist, this got me thinking of other uses of my newfound friend, the expletive infixation. And guess what? (It’s not actually surprising, but pretend with me for just a minute that you’re wowed.) There are some interesting geographic and regional variations across usage. The Brits and Australians shove “bloody” in between words. Examples:

• Out-bloody-rageous!

• Question: “Hey mate, could ya lend me 10 quid?” Answer: “Un-bloody-likely!”

• Question: “Hey guv, what birthday is this?” Answer: “Forty-bloody-seven… can’t flippin’ believe it.”

• Man U (Manchester United football team) is un-bloody-touchable this year. They’re going to win it all!

They also use flipping, bleeding, sodding, and blooming. “Fan-bleeding-tastic, the car broke down!” You wouldn’t catch an American using bloomin’ unless they’re referencing the health horror of a blooming onion, which, unsurprisingly, hails from the Outback Steakhouse. Now I know Aussies would rather pretend this restaurant chain has nothing to do with them and that Fosters is not actually “Australian for beer” but, no such luck. If we’re stuck exporting McDonald’s here in the States, the least they can do is pony up a mediocre steakhouse.

Because Brits are generally more couth than Americans, they also substitute euphemisms for the actual expletives. Instead of the F word, they’ll use “freaking” or “flipping.”

• “Did you hear that Boris Johnson is the new PM? It’s un-flipping-believable. Now we have our very own Trump in 10 Downing.”

• I can’t believe the match is cancelled because the ref didn’t show. This is un-stinking-believable!

We do this too in the US to a lesser extent to keep it G-rated, especially with stinking, freakin’ or friggin’.

• Question: “Do you want to come to the Jonas Brothers concert with me? I scored an extra ticket. Answer: “Abso-freakin’-lutely! When is it?

• Wearing shorts to work? That’s so un-friggin’-professional, John. You should know better.

But overall in the US, I’d say we tend to go for the jugular.

• Abso-fuckin’-lutely, over-fuckin’-whelmed, un-fucking-real, fan-fuckin’-tastic

• “My car broke down in Ala-fucking-bama, now what?!”

• “Go back to Kala-fucking-mazoo and leave me alone!”

• This DMV line is taking for-fucking-ever!

And the best part of all of this, is that super smart people have studied this, written papers, dissertations, article, and books. Look at this diagram. It’s all about how you verbally stress the infixation.

Wikipedia talks through a theory on this called prosody. “Its basic principle is that "the metrical stress tree of the host is minimally restructured to accommodate the stress tree of the infix. For example, although unbelievable and irresponsible have identical stress patterns, and the first syllable of each is a separate morpheme, the preferred insertion points are different: un-fuckin'-believable, but irre-fuckin'-sponsible. McCarthy explains this by saying they have different prosodic structures: un(be((lieva)ble)), but (irre)((sponsi)ble). The infix cannot fall between the syllables ir and re because they form a single prosodic foot.”

And for the non-scientific types, here’s a more illustrative example. It’s not really about the stress of the word phrase as much as placement of the expletive, but you get the gist.

Funnily enough, this article tells us that we generally don’t even think about any of this. We just say it and we get it right. Another study says, “No one ever instructed you in this process, yet there is remarkable agreement about where in the word fuckin should be inserted.” You don’t hear that every day in a scientific presentation!

And just so you know, it doesn’t all have to be rude and crass. You can infix without the expletive and get some really neat results. For example, if you’re taking the CalTrain from sunny Palo Alto to San Fran-foggy-cisco, you’ll want to bring a rain coat. Good advice.

But have fun, linguists. Diagram the crap out of this stuff, study it, figure out all the rules and exceptions and the geographical variants, and document them. If I were more scientifically-minded, I’d join you. But for now, I’ll just happily skim your work and take pleasure in the fact that you’re basically dissecting and analyzing Cinda-fuckin’-rella. Brilliant. Kit would be pleased. Cinderella, not so much.