Fie on fie!

Fie on goodness, fie

Fie on goodness, fie

Eight years of kindness to your neighbor
Making sure that the meek are treated well
Eight years of philanthropic labor
Derry down dell
Damn, but it's hell
Oh, fie on goodness, fie

Fie, fie, fie

It's no secret that I've always loved a good fie:

"Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed." –Hamlet

"Fetch him off, I pray you; he speaks nothing but madman: fie on him!"--Twelfth Night

"Fie, fie, on all tired jades, on all mad masters, and all foul ways!" --The Taming of the Shrew

But the truth is, and I wouldn't want this to get around, I had no idea what a fie was. It's got to be pretty awful, right? Nobody ever fies on the dog when he has an accident in the bedroom. You don't fie on the waitress because she forgot to bring ketchup. Fie is reserved for the absolute bastards of the cosmos.

So finally I looked up fie. And effing eff, it doesn't mean ANYTHING. It's not a blast of lightning, or a bright blade that cleaves a knave from the nave to the chops. It's not even the old fewmets hitting the windmill. It's just an interjection of disgust, like Tchaa! or Tsk! or even Pshaw!

Pshaw!

 This is how curiosity killed the cat. This is the curse of Faust. This is the overweening hubris of Oedipus. This is me wishing I'd never looked up fie. Let fie lie.

But where did the word come from? From French, and Latin (fi!) before that, according to etymologists. Thousands of years ago this monosyllable of disgust hovering just on rebellion bubbled up to the lips of a thoroughly tacked off plebeian and those around him in the forum nodded in agreement. Fie on the patricians, the praetorians, the Vandals and the Goths. When Hamlet uttered it something smelled rotten in the state of Denmark--fie has always been associated with olfactory offensiveness.

The interjection seems to be the red-headed stepchild of the parts of speech, barely even given a noby pencil-neck grammarians. But when you think of it, interjections were probably the first words humans uttered. Just think of Ook in his cave on a cold dark night. He can't hold it till morning. He gets up to go to the outcave, stubs his toe on a rock in the dark and yelps:

Interjection!

And, yes, I looked it up, and it turns out this very same theory, that language arose from interjections, has been held by thinkers from Democritus to Darwin, and even has a name: interjectional theory--also known as (I kid you not) the pooh-pooh theory. 

 But let's return to fie. How did the word lose its potency, become quaint, amusing even? Do words simply wear out over time, like our other tools? Did fie give place to another f-word? Will we ever weary of that one?

F*** if I know.

And if you think I'm ever going to look up "cleave a knave from the nave to the chops", then fie on you.

Camelot--Fie on Goodness. Cut from the show

in 1961, it never made it to the movie. Restored

for the revival. Seemingly the anthem of our time.