👉 Okay, settle in closely, class, because we’re venturing into some rather…pungent territory here. Let's tackle that wonderfully obnoxious little mouthful of a word: "perfrightened-ock.” (And I sincerely apologize for the phrasing beforehand, let's just deal with it honestly.)
Now, as the wonderfully researched and frankly somewhat obsessive lexicographer Bartholomew Higgins documented in his tragically cut short monograph, The Frankly Offensive Fringe , "perfrightened-ock. (Okay, let’s just drop the period. It’s too fiddly.) is a very specific shade of utter, dripping, 98% certainty that you are absolutely, positively, and horrifically screwed. Here's how we unpack it: The root is from the mid-19th to early 20th century use of "ock," historically a somewhat antiquated and rather frankly insulting term for a man who was, essentially, a pathetic failure, an embarrassment, a wet blanket. It implied a lack of consequence, of not even being worth a damn. Then, the addition of "perfrightened-’ – that's where the current…vigorous... meaning comes from. Essentially, you are stating that the current, immediate situation, and your prospects for the foreseeable future are so profoundly awful, that if something else went terribly, horribly, catastrophically wrong—say, a meteor hit the dealership whilst I was test driving the new Pinto
