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To fuck is to copulate; the term is one of the strongest vulgarisms in the English language. It is often bowdlerized as the f-word or f***.

Similar to other swearwords and taboo words, "fuck" is often not used in its original, literal meaning. Rather, it is an intensifier expressing nothing but the speaker's strong emotional involvement. In the book Practical English Usage, the two meanings of the word are illustrated by juxtaposing the sentences:

• What are you doing fucking in my bed?
• What are you fucking doing in my bed?

History of usage (and censorship)

While Shakespeare never used the term explicitly, he hinted at it in comic scenes in several plays. Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) contains "focative case" (see vocative case). In Henry V (IV.iv), Pistol threatens to "firk" (strike) a soldier, a euphemism for "fuck". Also in Henry V (III.iv), the French princess Katherine attempts to learn the English for "foot" and "gown", laughing at their similarity to "foutre" and "coun" (fuck and cunt, respectively).

"Fuck" did not appear in any dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1965. Its first appearance in the OED (along with the word cunt) was in 1972.

The liberal usage of the word (and other vulgarisms) by certain artists (such as James Joyce, Henry Miller, and Lenny Bruce) has led to the banning of their works and criminal charges of obscenity.

After Norman Mailer's publishers convinced him to bowdlerize "fuck" as "fug" in his work The Naked and the Dead (1948), Dorothy Parker scathed him with the quip, "So you're the man who can't spell fuck."

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission forbids the use of "fuck" (and other so-called four-letter words) on broadcast television and radio; it is usually replaced by a beep.

In 1900, the Prince of Wales said "Fuck it, I've taken a bullet" when he was shot by an anarchist while standing on a Brussels railway station.

In 1965, Kenneth Tynan was the first man to say "fuck" on television, on the late-night live satire program BBC3, causing a furor.

The films Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's'isname (both 1967) are contenders for being the first film to use the word.

Etymology

Its root is unclear; its earliest recorded use is before 1500, from the English-Latin poem Flen flys: "Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli" ("They are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely").

There is an evident connection to the Germanic word ficken, to strike (slang for "copulate"), and to the Latin futuere (hence the French foutre and Italian fottere), but there is no clear lineage.

It has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as Middle Dutch fokken (to thrust, to copulate), dialectical Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectical Swedish focka (to strike, copulate) and fock (penis).

There is perhaps even an original Celtic derivation; futuere being related to battuere (to strike, to copulate); which may be related to Irish bot and Manx bwoid (penis). The argument is that battuere and futuere (like the Irish and Manx words) comes from the Celtic *bactuere (to pierce), from the root buc- (a point). An even earlier root may be the Egyptian petcha (to copulate), which has a highly suggestive hieroglyph.

Part of the reason for the difficulty of the etymology is that the word was too taboo for the original Oxford English Dictionary.

There are many folk etymologies, including the acronyms "Fornication Under Consent of the King" and "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", supposedly written on the stocks above people who committed adultery.

References and external links

• Strange Cosmos: Origin and history of Fuck
• Jesse Sheidlower, The F Word (1999) ISBN 0375706348. Presents hundreds of uses of fuck and related words.
• Michael Swan, Practical English Usage , OUP, 1995, ISBN 019431197X