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Fuck is a strong and generally provocative swearword in Modern English. It is one of the best-known vulgarisms in the English-speaking world, although it is nowadays used more freely.

It is unclear whether the word has always been considered impolite and, if not, when it was initially considered to be profane. Some evidence indicates that in some English-speaking locales it was considered acceptable as late as the 17th century meaning "to strike" or "to penetrate" . Other evidence indicates that it may have become vulgar as early as the 16th century in England; thus other reputable sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary contend the true etymology is still uncertain, but appears to point to an Anglo-Saxon origin that in later times spread to the British colonies and worldwide.

The two seemingly contradictory hypotheses may reflect cultural and/or regional English dialects. See the etymology for further discussion.

Etymology

The etymology of fuck has given rise to a great deal of speculation, which should be regarded skeptically. The authoritative Oxford English Dictionary is quite cautious in providing an etymology for this word. In the quotation below, the dictionary's usual abbreviations are spelled out for clarity:

Early modern English fuck, fuk, answering to a Middle English type *fuken (weak verb) not found; ulterior etymology unknown. Synonymous German ficken can be shown to be related.

The first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys," from the first words of its opening line, "Flen, flyys, and freris"; that is, "Fleas, flies, and friars". The line that contains fuck reads "Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk." The Latin words "Non sunt in coeli, quia," mean "They are not in heaven, since." The code "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and two v's were used for w. This yields "fvccant (a fake Latin form) vvivys of heli." The whole thus reads in translation: "They are not in heaven since they fuck wives of Ely (a town near Cambridge)." From The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition.

As the OED notes, some have attempted to draw a connection to the German word ficken (to fuck, in dialects: to rub, to scratch, and historically to strike).

Other possible connections are to Latin futuere (hence the French foutre, the Italian fottere, the Romanian futa, the vulgar peninsular Spanish follar and joder, and the Portuguese foder). However, there is considerable doubt and no clear lineage for these derivations. These roots, even if cognate, are not the original Indo-European word for to fuck; that root is likely *hyebh-, ("h" is the H3 laryngeal) which is attested in Sanskrit (yabhati) and the Slavic languages (Russian yebat`), among others: compare Greek "oiphô" (verb), and Greek "zephyros" (noun, ref. a Greek belief that the west wind caused pregnancy). However, Wayland Young (who agrees that these words are related) argues that they derive from the Indo-European *bhu- or *bhug-, believed to be the root of "to be", "to grow", and "to build".

Spanish follar has a different root; according to Spanish etymologists, the Spanish verb "follar" (attested in the 19th century) derives from "fuelle" (bellows) from Latin "folle(m)" < Indo-European "bhel-"; ancient Spanish verb folgar (attested in the 15th century) derived from Latin "follicare", ultimately from follem/follis too.

A possible etymology is suggested by the fact that the Common Germanic fuk-, by an application of Grimm's law, would have as its most likely Indo-European ancestor *pug-, which appears in Latin and Greek words meaning "fight" and "fist". In early Common Germanic the word was likely used at first as a slang or euphemistic replacement for an older word for "intercourse", and then became the usual word for "intercourse". Then, fuck has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as Middle Dutch fokken (to thrust, copulate, or to breed), dialectical Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectical Swedish focka (to strike, copulate) and fock (penis). A very similar set of Latin words that have not yet been related to these are those for hearth or fire, "focus/focum" (with a short o), fiery, "focilis", Latin and Italian for hearthly/hearthling, "focia/focacia", and fire, "focca", and the Italian for bonfire, "focere". But these words came from New Latin, centuries after Middle Dutch.

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. Or perhaps Latin "futuere" came from the root "fu", Common Indo-European "bhu", meaning "be, become" and originally referred to procreation.

Fake etymologies

There are several urban-legend fake etymologies postulating an acronymic origin for the word. In the most popular version, it is said that the word "fuck" came from Irish law. If a couple committing adultery were "Found Under Carnal Knowledge" they would be penalized, with "FUCK" written on the stocks above them to denote the crime. Alternative explanations for "fuck" as an acronym for adultery pin it as "Fornication Under Cardinal/Carnal Knowledge". Another story is that it was written in the log book as "FUCK" when people in the military or navy who had homosexual intercourse were being punished. Variants of this include "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", "Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge", "Full Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", and "Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", a label supposedly applied to the crime of rape. In another story, a sign reading "Fornication Under Consent of the King" was supposedly placed on signs above houses in medieval England during times of population control and was special permission given to knights, by their king, when a knight wished to have sex with a woman. All these acronyms were never heard before the 1960s, according to the authoritative lexicographical work, The F-Word, and so are backronyms.

Usage history

Main article: History of fuck

Early usage

Its first known use as a verb meaning to have sexual intercourse is in "Flen flyys" (see above) some time before 1500.

William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his feiris he wald haif fukkit:/ Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane."

Some time around 1600, before the term acquired its current meaning, "windfucker" was an acceptable name for the bird now known as the kestrel.

While Shakespeare never used the term explicitly, he hinted at it in comic scenes in several plays. The 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.

Rise of modern usage

Fuck did not appear in any widely-consulted dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1965. Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary (along with the word cunt) was in 1972.

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

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), Tallulah Bankhead supposedly greeted him with the quip, "So you're the young man who can't spell fuck." (In fact, according to Mailer, the quip was devised by Bankhead's PR man. He and Bankhead never met until 1966 and did not discuss the word then.) The rock group The Fugs named themselves after the Mailer euphemism.

The first short story to include fuck in its title was probably Kurt Vonnegut's "The Big Space Fuck", originally published in 1972. Exhibiting Vonnegut's characteristic blend of pessimism and humor, this story tells of a polluted and overpopulated Earth. On midnight, 4 July 1989, the United States fires the Arthur C. Clarke, a missile whose warhead contains eight hundred pounds of freeze-dried semen, aiming at the Andromeda Galaxy. This story, which contains many allusions to earlier Vonnegut works (such as character names and the "chrono-synclastic infundibula"), was written as a personal favor to Harlan Ellison. First published in Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions, it is reprinted in Palm Sunday.

George Carlin once commented that the word fuck ought to be considered more appropriate, because of its implications of love and reproduction, than the violence exhibited in many movies. He humorously suggested replacing the word "kill" with the word "fuck" in his comedy routine, such as in an old movie western: "Okay, Sheriff, we're gonna fuck you, now. But we're gonna fuck you slow..." Or, perhaps at a baseball game: "Fuck the Ump, fuck the Ump, fuck the Ump!"

In a widely-publicized June 2004 incident, US Vice President Dick Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy to either "fuck off" or "go fuck" himself during an exchange on the floor of the Senate. The Washington Times, in a show of journalistic prudence, reported that the Vice President "urged Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility." The Vice President's words later came back to haunt him in the wake of Hurricane Katrina while touring the disaster area in Gulfport, Ms. when local resident Ben Marble, M.D. said "Go Fuck Yourself Mr. Cheney" live on international television.

Freedom of expression

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the mere public display of fuck is protected under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and cannot be made a criminal offense. In 1968, Paul Robert Cohen had been convicted of "disturbing the peace" for wearing a jacket with "FUCK THE DRAFT" on it (which was to do with conscription in the Vietnam War.) The conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeals and overturned by the Supreme Court. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

Pornographer Larry Flynt, representing himself before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 in a libel case, shouted, "Fuck this court!" during the proceedings and called the justices "nothing but eight assholes and a token cunt." Chief Justice Warren E. Burger had him arrested for contempt of court but the charge was later dismissed.

Popular usage

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission fines stations for the broadcast of "indecent language", but in 2003 the agency's enforcement bureau ruled that the airing of the statement "This is really, really fucking brilliant!" by U2 member Bono after receiving a Golden Globe Award was neither obscene nor indecent. As U.S. broadcast indecency regulation only extends to depictions or descriptions of sexual or excretory functions, Bono's use of the word as a mere intensifier was not covered. In early 2004, the full Commission reversed the bureau ruling, in an order that stated that "the F-word is one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language"; a fine, however, has yet to result. Notwithstanding widespread usage and linguistic analysis to the contrary, the reversal was premised on the conclusion that the word fuck has always referred to sexual activity, a claim that the FCC neither explained nor supported with evidence.

In German, although the word "to fuck" literally translates as "ficken", and the exclamation of "fuck" translates usually as "Scheisse" or "Mist", the exclamation "fuck" itself has been known to have been "borrowed" into the German language as a swear word and is in semi-frequent use. Its use, however, is considered less offensive than the same word in English.

Variations

The word "fuck" is highly varied in the English language. Most commonly, anything that is highly disordered, or in a less than desirable state, is referred to as fucked up; moreover, to fuck up is to fail, e.g. "I fucked up on a test." The interjection "fuck me" is also used to exclaim disappointment with the state of affairs one finds themself in. Fuck is also used as a dysphemism for adverse action, sometimes also expressed as being fucked over, e.g. "he could have helped me out, but he fucked me." To the very minimal degree at which these usages are connected to sex itself, the references are not to an act of lovemaking but are more appropriately understood as a hyperbolic and dysphemistic allusion to rape.

Fucker is a term for a person that has little, if anything, to do with the action of copulation. Originally, it was a term of contempt similar to "asshole"; however, in recent years it has become an expression of camaraderie and affection among American males, e.g. "you're one smart fucker."

Fucker is also sometimes used as a verb, in which case it has connotations similar to those of the phrase "to fuck over", but also involves an act of willing deceit.

The common expressions fuck you, go fuck yourself, and "fuck off" are often used as leave me alone or go away, just like the jack off expression, rather than inviting the person to masturbate oneself. These expressions are nonetheless considered vulgar.

The phrase "fucked up" is often used to indicate some kind of disfunctionality. It can be used to describe the state of one's mind ("You're really fucked up") although in Commonwealth English the phrase "fucked in the head" is used perhaps more frequently. The verb phrase "to fuck up" usually implies the rendering of an appliance or other device non-functional ("You've fucked my computer up").

One common phrase is 'stupid fuck'. Sometimes multiple usages of the word fuck can be found in one sentence, e.g. "Fuck the fucking fuckers!", or "I fucked up fucking the fucking fuck."

Another variation is "For fuck(s) sake" found in the Antipodean regions, denoting frustration or disbelief.

Further reference

  • Hargrave, Andrea Millwood (2000). Delete Expletives? London: Advertising Standards Authority, British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission.
  • 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
  • Phillip J. Cunningham, Zakennayo!: The Real Japanese You Were Never Taught in School, Plume (1995) ISBN 0452275067
  • Wayland Young, Eros Denied: Sex in Western Society. Grove Press/Zebra Books, New York 1964.

See also

External links

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