mafa

Den of Geek

The slang motherfucker was created in the early 1900s, with motherfucking beginning in the 1890s. While both of these terms began as extremely offensive insults, they eventually became positive descriptors in Black English for something “badass” by the late 1950s.

Mofo, as a shortening for motherfucker, is found by the 1960s. Its form is probably due to a couple factors. The first is pronunciation in Black English, which often drops unstressed, final R sounds. The others? Probably euphemism and censorship.

Mofo takes its spelling from the O in mother, though in actual speech, many people would more likely pronounce a quicker, more casual motherfucker like muhfuh (which can be seen in hip-hip lyrics) or mafa, which is probably meant to represent the same sound.

Hungry,,,,I know one of you mafa cooked sumthin this morning

— Lemme Borrow A Dolla (@Iymsumtinelse) November 29, 2011

Thrill-master Stephen King notably featured a version of mafa, mahfah, in The Drawing of the Three, his 1987 installment of his Dark Towers series. The novel features a split-personality black Civil Rights activist, Detta Walker, whoe King attempts to give dialect. Soon after, Usenet chatters noted the term in the 1990s.

Mafa spreads further online in early 2000s—oh, the internet. We can find mafa on a 2003 message board (about, of all things, kite-flying) where a user euphemistically substitutes it for motherfucker in song lyrics. Urban Dictionary enters mafa by 2005 and people were mafa’ing on the likes of Twitter by the 2010s.

Interestingly, we see mafa overtake mofo in Google Trends search interest in the 2010s, but this is likely due to Mafa Games, which offers dress-up and makeover games for young girls online.