There's nothing new under the feckin' sun. As suspected, the word turns up in James Joyce. See below.

Feck Along with 'craic', possibly the most frequently used expression in the dictionary of informal Irish discourse, and like its goodtimer buddy, this pillar of Irish slang is highly flexible and covers a multitude.

Its most common usage would be as an exclamation denoting anger/disappointment/frustration, such as 'feck, the pub's shut', or 'feck, it's raining again'.

Quite often employed as an adjective - 'the feckin' telly is on the blink again', or 'where did I leave that feckin' umbrella', or 'where's that feckin' father of yours', 'feck' has often been compared to its ruder Anglo Saxon counterpart - the four letter f-word. The one resounding difference is that it doesn't bear any sexual connotations whatsoever.

A very popular usage is as an impolite request for someone to leave eg, 'feck off!'. It can also be used as a proper noun when describing a less than savoury individual eg, 'the ould fecker ran off with my wife' or 'I told that fecker not to touch the whiskey' or 'that fecker of a tractor won't start' or 'that fecker of a bullock has bolted again'. As with all derogatory expressions in Hiberno-English, 'fecker' is often with affectionate overtones. 'God love him/her, the poor fecker' is translated as 'that unfortunate individual, have pity on his/her predicament'.

Added to these popular uses of 'feck' are many little-known variations on it. In County Cork there is a popular game of cards called (surprisingly) 'Feck'. It is also used to describe an implement in the outlawed sport of Pitch and Toss.

In parts of Ulster, it is used to describe someone who lacks ability, eg, 'did you see the way he fenced that ditch, sure there's no feck in him'. This particular use of the term is obsolete in modern slang vernacular.

Of course, a word with such a colourful plethora of meanings also needs to be a verb. To feck something is to pilfer it. 'He fecked a banana' means the boy stole a banana. This is a relatively Dublin usage of the term and has been used by such literary luminaries as Ulysses progenitor, James Joyce. In 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', 'but why did they run away, tell us?'...'Because they had fecked cash out of the cash register'. If truth be known, the full extent of 'feck' as the most flexible institution of Irish slang has not been explored here, and its prevalance in day-to-day vernacular remains sadly under-appreciated.