Farkakte is one of those wonderfully expressive
Yiddish words. In
Yinglish use it's spelled a number of ways, including
farkakta, fakakte, fakakta, verkakte and
verkakta. Whatever its spelling, it is treated as a potentially
vulgar word (guaranteeing its gleeful use by younger Yiddishers) whose
German root form
verkackt (thanks
DonJaime!) means something akin to 'beshitted' or 'becrapped', hence, 'crappy' or 'screwed up' (
DonJaime also tells me that it is the past participle of
verkacken which is used to mean 'screw up'.)
1 Likely shares root word with
English language children's slang 'kaka' (
poop).
Modern Yiddish use of the word has extended it to perform the adjective function for anything from 'shitty' to 'fucked up' to 'crazy' to 'useless.' It's the Swiss Army knife of derogatory descriptors, although it is more often used to refer to inanimate objects or situations rather than people.
Examples:
"I'm not going anywhere in that farkakte car! A death wish you've got now?"
"And then the ex-girlfriend showed up right after the ex-wife, and the whole situation ended up completely farkakte."
1. Algeo, John and Pyles, Thomas: The Origins and Development of the English Language. Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2009. p. 262.