Swearing like Strieber

Note: This post contains lots of swearing and lots of Whitley Strieber. If that offends you, you might want to read something else instead.

Well, fuckaroo!

Those who see the film version of Communion first and then read the book will no doubt be disappointed to discover that, unlike Christopher Walken, Whitley Strieber never actually refers to his alien visitors as "little blue fuckers about that big." (Nor does he ever say "Oy vey, what a day, what a schmear!" Walken's a legit New Yorker; Strieber, a Texas transplant.) However, his books, at least the fictional ones, do contain plenty of cussin' -- and, like everything else Strieber does, it's just a tad idiosyncratic.

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Sonembitch

My God, Rollo, Rollie boy, hey, you are one sinister sonembitch.

-- a story anthologized in Murder in the Family, 2002

Bats. In your belfry, squeaking like sonembitches 

-- 2012: The War for Souls, 2007

Tough sonembitches.

-- Ibid. 

I've never liked executions. Some poor dumb sonembitch, every damn time.

-- Hybrids, 2011

He's a smart sonembitch.

-- The Wild, 2015

Seemingly endless variants of son of a bitch exist, but this one seems to be unique to Strieber.

• son of a bitch (14,200,000 Google hits)
• sonofabitch (549,000 hits)
• sumbitch (261,000 hits)
• somebitch (31,100 hits)
• sumabitch (31,000 hits)
• sombitch (20,500 hits)
• sonabitch (18,800 hits)
• summabitch (11,000 hits)
• sonbitch (8,520 hits)
• somabitch (2,860 hits)
• sonobitch (2,360 hits)
• sonamabitch (1,940 hits)
• sonembitch (68 hits) -- all from Strieber

The standard plural, of course, is sons of bitches, but often enough sonofabitch is treated as a single word and pluralized accordingly.

• sons of bitches (1,870,000 hits)
• sons of a bitch (656,000 hits)
• sumbitches (209,000 hits) -- apparently a kind of cookie, not a swear
• sonsabitches (122,000 hits)
• sons of a bitches (64,100 hits)
• son of a bitches (52,000 hits)
• sonofabitches (13,500 hits)
• sombitches (10,100 hits) -- half cookies, half swears
• summabitches (5,320 hits)
• somebitches (4,560 hits) -- also cookies
• sonabitches (1,990 hits)
• sonbitches (793 hits)
• sumabitches (789 hits)
• somabitches (273 hits)
• sonamabitches (182 hits)
• sonobitches (54 hits)
• sonembitches (14 hits) -- all from Strieber

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God-for-damned

"It'd ruin somebody's day, for sure."

 

"The God-for-damned enemy's day"

-- 2012: The War for Souls, 2007

It's much harder to confirm via Google that this is a unique Strieberism, since lots of irrelevant hits come up ("the love of God for damned souls," "a god for damned near everything," etc.), but I've certainly never come across it anywhere else.

I assume this has something to do with the German word for "goddamned," which is gottverdammt, not far at all from God-for-damned. (Keep in mind that German v is pronounced /f/.) Although Strieber's people have apparently been in Texas for several generations, the surname is obviously German, and perhaps this German-influenced way of swearing has been handed down as a sort of family heirloom.

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Fuckaroo

Hideous stuff [absinthe], but it did pack a pop. He got it out now, unscrewed the bottle, and chug-a-lugged.

 

Fuckaroo.

 

He went down to dinner, and ate in silence.

-- 2012: The War for Souls, 2007 

"This man isn't dead! This man is breathing!"

. . . "Fuckaroo, he's right."

-- Ibid. 

The word fuckaroo is not unique to Strieber, but as far as I can tell, everyone else uses it as a noun -- meaning, variously, a fuck-up ("a real fuckaroo"), bullshit ("doesn't give a shit about trivial fuckaroo"), or a fuck ("the best fuckaroo I've had so far"). A Google Books search also turns up a Nicholson Baker novel that includes the line "I surveyed the scene for a moment and said, 'Fuckaroo banzai'" -- whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Only Strieber (and possibly Baker?) uses it as an exclamation.