Fugghead (n.) is one of the microcosm’s least polite ways of calling someone an absolute idiot, usually with strong implications of behavior so far beyond the pale with respect to fandom that even the most liberal of fans would be inclined to raise an eyebrow over it. Claude Degler, for example, while he had a number of cockamamie notions, was considered a fugghead because he stole from the very fans who hosted him when he traveled around the country; George Wetzel was generally disliked for his bigotry but was considered a fugghead because he wrote poison pen letters to the employers of fans he disliked. Coined by Francis T. Laney, this was an in-print bowdlerization and euphemism for use in fanzines back in the days when the Post Office felt that part of their duty was to read, rather than just deliver, the mail and you weren't supposed to use certain four-letter words; in wire correspondence (which predated tape as a recording medium), where it was presumed the post awful would not go to the trouble of listening, Laney pronounced the term with the appropriate four-letter word in place of "fugg."
See also fuggheaded.
Contributors: Dr. Gafia
| from Fancyclopedia 2 ca. 1959 |
| (Laney) A close relative of the LMJ. Laney recognized fuggheads with presentations of a Fan-Dango Award (certificate below). A fugghead is someone who usually speaks before thinking, in an officious and annoying manner — and won't stop. Tucker defined the fugghead as "a lout fond of asinine statements, silly assertions, and fraudulent claims; an oaf with a babbling tongue." Fuggheads also do stupid and asinine things as well as merely saying them. (The practice of holding conversations while leaning in doorways so as to block easy entrance and exit may be far too common in fandom to be worthy of being called fuggheaded.) Note: people who loudly state that of course they aren't fuggheads… probably are. (And so, of course, are most fans at times, depending on the topic of conversation.) Art Rapp's Not-Poem summed it up: See the happy fugghead: He doesn't give a Foo! Sometimes I am a fugghead! (But that is DNQ.) |
