10 F**king Snowclones

Mike Shaver made a minor media splash with his well-publicized pronouncement at Blackhat that Mozilla would fix security holes in “ten fucking days”. (Note: we don’t usually curse here on Peer Pressure — though I swear like a sailor in real life — but this is a direct quote and we’re all adults here anyway, right?) Despite the fact that this got blown out of proportion, it was actually a pretty good PR move since it highlighted Mozilla’s unquestioned commitment to addressing vulnerabilities in a timely fashion when compared to other browser vendors (who will remain nameless). Like much of what Mike says, it’s also grumpily hilarious.

Well, it seems like the expression has legs. Someone remarked to me the other day (off the record and jokingly) that Firefox 3.0 would be out in “10 fucking months”, causing me to almost pee myself. Now Shane from ActiveState has followed suit by pegging the timeframe for their upcoming source code release for Open Komodo as “two f**king months”.

There’s a name for this type of linguistic construction: a snowclone. Coined by a writer for the excellent Language Log, it describes a formulaic cliche like “X is the new black”. This may well be the first vulgar snowclone of any import, proving that in the Mozilla community we (or at least Shaver) are forging new territory in language as well as technology.

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4 Comments »

1. It definitely seems that “[number] f**king [time unit]” is now a running gag / cliché term in the Mozilla community…I still get a chuckle when I see these phrases popping up.

   Comment by kourge — 9/7/2007 @ 2:49 pm

2. Matt, you’re a cunning linguist.

   Comment by Cedric — 9/7/2007 @ 3:13 pm

3. Jon Stewart had a series of sections on The Daily Show entitled “Ten F@#king Years”—I think that was before Shaver’s quote.

   Comment by Greg K Nicholson — 9/8/2007 @ 5:15 am

4. Good point. I also realized after posting that Marc Andreesen’s hilarious “five f___ing weeks” post came out a month or so before the Shaver incident. Nonetheless, I don’t think the formula qualified as a snowclone until the Mozilla community picked it up.

   Comment by Matt — 9/8/2007 @ 11:13 am

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