>feck is never heard as word in US
This takes us back to the rather elderly expletives thread (deep in the bowels).
Another television programme, I'm afraid. When they made Father Ted they needed to reflect the prevalance of four letter words which begin with f and and with k in everyday Irish speech (see Rubrick's thoughts on the subject). The word needed to be scattered liberally (as an intersifier, rather than having any particular meaning). There were two problems as far as I understand. Firstly there are only so many f***s allowed per hour of viewing for a programme scheduled to go out at around 9pm. Secondly the characters were Catholic priests. The programme makers invented the word "feck" which could be uttered without fear of upsetting too many people (given that the content of the programme was affectionate but not exactly angelic).
The result was, of course, that everyone understood the word feck, so it entered the language in the same way that some of the older hands are able to quote whole sketches from Monty Python.
