where does ‘bugfuck’ come from? ive never seen anyone else say it but you’ve evidently been on the bugfuck train for years now
According to Google Ngram, the word "bugfuck" first starts to show up in the printed corpus of the English language around 1970, though it's probably older than that in spoken use. The earliest citation I've personally been able to chase down is the 1975 edition of Steven Phillip Smith's American Boys (therein spelled "bug-fuck"), which suggests it may have its roots in American military slang.
The way I’ve always heard it was “bumfuck” or “buttfuck”, not bugfuck.
Google Ngram still points to a 1970s origin though.
I've had multiple people in the notes on this post insist that it's a variant of "bumfuck" (as in the phrase "Bumfuck, Nowhere"), and as far as I can tell, this is an unrelated term. In its earliest attested uses, "bugfuck" seems to functions as an intensifier suggesting madness (as in "bugfuck crazy", or "to go bugfuck"), just as it does today. If you've been interpreting "bugfuck" as denoting insignificance, you may have been getting the wrong idea this whole time!
