“Holy moly. What the heck is happening here? Hey, hey! Let me out of here. Hey, you. Give me back control of my body.” “[scoffs] Nah, dude, this is my body. You already effed it up.” “No, it's not.” “Whatever, man. I don't take orders from a reflection. [chuckles]” “I'm not a reflection. Help! I think an anaphasic alien took over my body.”2022 September 22, Mike McMahan, “Reflections” (4:41 from the start), in Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 3, episode 5, spoken by Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero):
“So what do you think?” “Am I supposed to eff him or, you know, what's the plan here?” “I mean, you can if you want, but, no, that's not why I brought him here.” “Well, why did you bring him here? PS: I probably will eff him. But more out of boredom than anything else. [sighs] Such is the plight of The Guide.”2024 October 21, Paul Simms, “The Return of Jerry” (21:03 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 6, episode 1, spoken by The Guide (Kristen Schaal):
Etymology Back-formation from ineffable, ultimately from Latin effor (“utter”).
1
To put into words; to express.
[…] and perhaps also because what we know partakes in no small measure of the nature of what has so happily been called the unutterable or ineffable, so that any attempt to utter or eff it is doomed to fail, doomed, doomed to fail.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC:
They, no more than we, found it hard to eff the ineffable, but they, you see, needed to console themselves more.2001, Paul West, Master Class: Scenes from a Fiction Workshop, page 57:
2 more examples
It is another way of effing the ineffable, one with potentially serious practical effects.2018, Wesley J. Wildman, Effing the Ineffable: Existential Mumblings at the Limits of Language, page 83:
Douglas Adams (1952–2001), author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, puts it memorably: “Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”2020, Tim Vivian, Other Voices, Other Rooms: Poems, page 100: