Can someone please explain the origins and syntax of using "something fierce" at the end of a phrase?

To want something very badly.

@Marina – Thanks for your response; I adjusted the question slightly though because I know what it means but don’t understand its “structure”. Sorry!

You are right. It is. It is slang not proper English.

But I don’t understand it all. With most slang I can at least identify what is going on—but this seems akin to saying “I really want to go swimming french fries.”

Here is the best explanation I can find:

”—adv.
1. in some degree; to some extent; somewhat.
2. Informal.to a high or extreme degree; quite: He took on something fierce about my tardiness.”

Haha, I love that saying. :D

@mirifique, it’s an old-fashioned expression that I would associate with the rural south, in the mountaineous areas.

Yeah, it’s a very useful sort of “intensifier”:

“I have got to eat some sushi something fierce!”
“I need to piss something fierce!”
“I’ve gotta get my groove on something fierce!”

@Jamspoon and @AlfredaPrufrock – I get what it means, but still don’t get the syntax and logic (albeit slang).

I can look it up later (not while at work), but I would hazard a guess that it could be reconstructed as “in a way that is something fierce”—i.e., in a way that is like a fierce thing.

This wiki article on adverbs may be helpful. It mentions in particular “something fierce” as an adverb.

The reason why I mentioned rural south before is that there were, for a long time, settlements in Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, etc. where 17th century English was pretty much preserved.

@AlfredaPrufrock & Jeruba See my second post above. I agree it is the adverbial use of something that is the best explanation. If it was Southern, it has certainly escaped those confines. Boston Globe and NY Times.

I would love to hear the phrase origin if someone can find the etymology.

Good citations, you two. I was suggesting a whole phrase of which it might have been a shortened version, conceptually even if perhaps not literally—trying to get at the structure, not the function or meaning, as the question requested.

I think it’s a shortend simile. I want sushi [like] something [I want] fierce[ly]. I believe that sometimes the like is actually there. I want sushi, like something fierce. The fierce is modifying the verb in the first part of the phrase [fierce wanting], and the “something” as said above, intensifies the modification of the verb.

This is all my own opinion, and has nothing to do with any research. I haven’t done any research at all.

I keep thinking “Mark Twain” for some reason…

I don’t think so, @daloon, because you are separating the two elements that seem to be bonded together and you are interpreting it in just one context, namely, wanting something. How about these?

When the boss asked for comments, I bit my tongue something fierce.
We were giggling something fierce.
I have to pee something fierce.

The wanting isn’t in the meaning of this expression but in something it modifies (or could modify).

I bit my tongue like biting something fiercely.

The other two don’t fit my idea, although they can be translated in my wierd translator

We were giggling like some fierce gigglers.

Then again, maybe they do.
We were giggling like something that giggles fiercely.

I have to pee like something that pees fiercely.

Like I said. I’m just taking a blind swing at this one. I could be off the wall, something fierce.

I fiercely bit my tongue.

Not the same thing.

I’ll try a different theory now, before I attempt research.

Let’s consider the possibility that the phrase is an ignorant permutation of “somewhat fiercely.”

We can readily find analogs for both components in familiar speech. There’s the expression “somewhat of a,” which is an ungrammatical substitute for “something of a”:

— He’s somewhat of a dandy. (s/b “He’s something of a dandy.”)
— It was somewhat of a downer. (s/b “It was something of a downer.”)

Omitting the -ly or using the adjective in place of the adverb is common in uneducated speech and also in careless or casual speech generally:

— We fixed it up real good. (s/b “really well”)
— You have to speak really quiet. (s/b “quietly”)
— He was looking at me very weird. (s/b “weirdly”)

It’s not hard to imagine speaking of doing something “really fierce.” If I can entertain that, I can also imagine “somewhat fierce.”

The problem with this is that “somewhat” means “moderately,” and “something fierce” isn’t moderate. It’s extreme. But the phrase could have evolved over time.

It’s still adverbial in any case.

“Something fierce” drops so nicely into “talk like a pirate” that I feel it has to have some tie to an older form of vernacular.

Would this article have any bearing?

You might have something there, @AlfredaPrufrock, indirectly if not directly. This expression seems to be in much more widespread use than the preserved-in-amber archaisms of Scotch-Irish dialect found in Appalachia. I have heard it in widely separated parts of the country, and on both coasts, and it is used familiarly among those with no ancestry in that area.

But it’s quite possible that it has its roots in other speech and possibly in another language. I learned the term “calque” from reading The Secret Life of Words. A calque is an expression that traces a corresponding expression in another language—we say it the way we do because of its counterpart in, say, French, where the expression originated, even though the construction wouldn’t naturally be formed the same way in English. (It’s explained in context here.) Possibly “something fierce” is a direct borrowing from another language without the customary adjustments that occur in actual translation.

Here’s a very odd thing. If I put “something fierce” (in quotes) into Google, I get this result:

Results 1 – 10 of about 231,000 for “something fierce”.

(Plenty of examples there, by the way, and not geographically limited at all). But if I add a search term—which should reduce the number of hits—I see this:

Results 1 – 10 of about 349,000 for “something fierce” origin.

I find this inexplicable: that I should see more hits when I add the word “origin” to the search terms than when I search on the phrase alone. Search engines are not supposed to work that way.

Anyway, I have not been able to find what I was looking for, either among my references or in a reasonable amount of online searching. So I am going to have to surrender with “I don’t know” (which bugs me something fierce) and move on. I hope somebody else gets it.

@Jeruba I couldn’t find anyhting yesterday either. Maybe next time I go to the library.

Just out of curiosity, why are you asking? Are you an English or grammar teacher? Or do you just like to understand and be knowledgeable? I asked because to me the meaning of expressions is important, particularly since I am bilingual. I am glad that I am not the only one asking and wondering about these things.