Fuck

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This article is about the English language word. For other uses, see Fuck (disambiguation).

Fuck is an obscene English-language word[1] which often refers to the act of sexual intercourse
but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to denote disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is
usually considered to be first attested to around 1475. In modern usage, the term "fuck" and its
derivatives (such as "fucker" and "fucking") can be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an
interjection or an adverb. There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as
compounds that incorporate it, such as "motherfucker," "fuckwit" and "fucknut".

Contents
 1 Offensiveness
 2 Etymology
o 2.1 Germanic cognates
o 2.2 Latin and Greek cognates
o 2.3 False etymologies
 3 Grammar
 4 Early usage
 5 Rise of modern usage
 6 Modern usage
o 6.1 Examples of more recent usage
o 6.2 Use in politics
o 6.3 Use in marketing
o 6.4 Band names
o 6.5 Holy fuck
o 6.6 Machine mistranslation
o 6.7 F-bomb
 7 Censorship
o 7.1 Freedom of expression
 8 Common alternatives
 9 See also
 10 References
 11 Further reading
 12 External links

Offensiveness
The word is considered obscene but is common in many informal and familiar situations.
It is unclear whether the word has always been considered vulgar or, if not, when it first came to
be used to describe (often in an extremely angry, hostile or belligerent manner) unpleasant
circumstances or people in an intentionally offensive way, such as in the term motherfucker, one
of its more common usages in some parts of the English-speaking world. Some English-speaking
countries censor it on television and radio. Andrea Millwood Hargrave's 2000 study of the
attitudes of the British public found that fuck was considered the third-most severe profanity and
its derivative motherfucker second. Cunt was considered the most severe.[2]

Nevertheless, the word has become increasingly less vulgar and more publicly acceptable, an
example of the "dysphemism treadmill", wherein former vulgarities become inoffensive and
commonplace.[3][4] According to linguist Pamela Hobbs, "notwithstanding its increasing public
use, enduring cultural models that inform our beliefs about the nature of sexuality and sexual acts
preserve its status as a vile utterance that continues to inspire moral outrage." Hobbs considers
users rather than usage of the word and sub-divides users into 'non-users', for whom the word
"evokes the core sexual meanings and associated sexual imagery that motivate the taboo", and
'users' for whom "metaphorical uses of the word fuck no more evoke images of sexual
intercourse than a ten-year-old’s ‘My mom’ll kill me if she finds out’ evokes images of murder,"
so that the "criteria of taboo are missing."[5]

Because of its increasing usage in the public forum, in 2005 the word was included for the first
time as one of three vulgarities in The Canadian Press's Canadian Press Caps and Spelling
guide. Journalists were advised to refrain from censoring the word but use it sparingly and only
when its inclusion was essential to the story.[6]

Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary states that the ultimate etymology is uncertain, but that the word
is "probably cognate" with a number of Germanic words with meanings involving striking,
rubbing and having sex or is derivative of the Old French word that meant "to fuck."[7]

Germanic cognates

The word has probable cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German ficken (to fuck);
Dutch fokken (to breed, to beget); dialectal Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectal Swedish
focka (to strike, to copulate) and fock (penis).[7] This points to a possible etymology where
Common Germanic fuk- comes from an Indo-European root meaning "to strike", cognate with
non-Germanic words such as Latin pugno "I fight" or pugnus "fist".[7] By application of Grimm's
law, this hypothetical root has the form *pug–. There is a theory that fuck is most likely derived
from Flemish, German, or Dutch roots, and is probably not derived from an Old English root.[8]

Latin and Greek cognates

There may be a kinship with the Latin futuere (futuo), a verb with almost exactly the same
meaning as the English verb "to fuck". From fūtuere came French foutre, Catalan fotre, Italian
fottere, Romanian futere, vulgar peninsular Spanish joder, Portuguese foder, and the obscure
English equivalent to futter, coined by Richard Francis Burton. However, there is no clear past
lineage or derivation for the Latin word. These roots, even if cognates, are not the original Indo-
European word for to copulate, but Wayland Young argues that they derive from the Indo-
European *bhu– or *bhug– ("be", "become"), or as causative "create" [see Young, 1964]. A
possible intermediate might be a Latin 4th-declension verbal noun *fūtus, with possible
meanings including "act of (pro)creating".

However, the connection to futuere has been disputed—Anatoly Liberman calls it a

"coincidence" and writes that it is not likely to have been borrowed from the Low German
precursors to fuck.[9]

Greek phyō (φύω) has various meanings, including (of a man) "to beget", or (of a woman), "to
give birth to".[10] Its perfect pephyka (πέφυκα) can be likened[citation needed] to "fuck" and its
equivalents in other Germanic languages.[10]

False etymologies

One reason that the word fuck is so hard to trace etymologically is that it was used far more
extensively in common speech than in easily traceable written forms. There are several urban-
legend false etymologies postulating an acronymic origin for the word. None of these acronyms
were ever recorded before the 1960s, according to the authoritative lexicographical work The F-
Word, and thus are backronyms. In any event, the word fuck has been in use far too long for
some of these supposed origins to be possible. Some of these urban legends are that the word
fuck came from Irish law. If a couple were caught committing adultery, they would be punished
"For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge In the Nude," with "FUCKIN" written on the stocks above
them to denote the crime. A similar variant on this theory involves the recording by church
clerks of the crime of "Forbidden Use of Carnal Knowledge." Another theory is that of a royal
permission. During the Black Death in the Middle Ages, towns were trying to control
populations and their interactions. Since uncontaminated resources were scarce, supposedly
many towns required permission to have children. Hence, the legend goes, that couples that were
having children were required to first obtain royal permission (usually from a local magistrate or
lord) and then place a sign somewhere visible from the road in their home that said "Fornicating
Under Consent of King," which was later shortened to "FUCK." This story is hard to document,
but has persisted in oral and literary traditions for many years; however, it has been demonstrated
to be an urban legend.[11]

A different false etymology, first made popular on the radio show Car Talk, states that the phrase
"fuck you" comes from the phrase "pluck yew" and relates the origins of fuck to the myth
surrounding the V sign. This myth states that French archers at the Battle of Agincourt insulted
the English troops' ability to shoot their weapons by waving their fingers in a V shape; after the
English secured an overwhelming victory, they returned the gesture. The addition of the phrase
"fuck you" to the myth came when it was claimed that the English yelled that they could still
"pluck yew" (yew wood being the preferred material for longbows at the time), a phrase that
evolved into the modern "fuck you".[8]

Grammar
Fuck has a very flexible role in English grammar, including use as both a transitive and
intransitive verb, and as an adjective, adverb, and noun.[12] It can also be used as an interjection
and a grammatical ejaculation. Linguist Geoffrey Hughes found eight distinct usages for English
curse words, and fuck can apply to each. For example, it fits in the "curse" sense ("fuck you!") as
well as the "personal" sense ("You fucker"). Its vulgarity also contributes to its mostly figurative
sense, though the word itself is used in its literal sense to refer to sexual intercourse, its most
common usage is figurative—to indicate the speaker's strong sentiment and to offend or shock
the listener.[13]

Early usage
In 2015, Dr. Paul Booth claimed to have found "(possibly) the earliest known use of the word
'fuck' that clearly has a sexual connotation": in English court records of 1310–11, a man local to
Chester is referred to as "Roger Fuckebythenavele", probably a nickname. "Either this refers to
an inexperienced copulator, referring to someone trying to have sex with the navel, or it's a rather
extravagant explanation for a dimwit, someone so stupid they think that this is the way to have
sex," says Booth.[14] An earlier name, that of John le Fucker recorded in 1278, has been the
subject of debate, but is thought by many philologists to have had some separate and non-sexual
origin.

Otherwise, the usually accepted first known occurrence of the word is found in code in a poem in
a mixture of Latin and English composed in the 15th century.[8] 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 ("Fleas, flies, and friars"). The line that contains fuck reads
Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Deciphering the phrase "gxddbou xxkxzt pg
ifmk", here by replacing each letter by the previous letter in alphabetical order, as the English
alphabet was then, yields the macaronic non sunt in coeli, quia fuccant vvivys of heli, which
translated means, "They are not in heaven, because they fuck the women of Ely".[15] The phrase
was probably encoded because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy;[8] it is
uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. The stem of
fuccant is an English word used as Latin: English medieval Latin has many examples of writers
using English words when they did not know the Latin word: "workmannus" is an example. In
the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for "woman".[citation
needed]

William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his feiris he wald
haue fukkit: / Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane" (ll. 13–14).

The oldest occurrence of the word in adjectival form (which implies use of the verb) in English
comes from the margins of a 1528 manuscript copy of Cicero's De Officiis. A monk had
scrawled in the margin notes, "fuckin Abbot." Whether the monk meant the word literally, to
accuse this abbott of "questionable monastic morals," or whether he used it "as an intensifier, to
convey his extreme dismay" is unclear.[16]

John Florio's 1598 Italian-English dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes, included the term, along with
several now-archaic, but then-vulgar synonyms, in this definition:
  Fottere: To jape, to sard, to fucke, to swive, to occupy.[17]

Of these, "occupy" and "jape" still survive as verbs, though with less profane meanings, while
"sard" was a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon verb seordan (or seorðan, ON serða), to copulate;
and "swive" had derived from earlier swīfan, to revolve i.e. to swivel (compare modern-day
"screw"). As late as the 18th century, the verb occupy was seldom used in print because it carried
sexual overtones.[18][19]

A 1790 poem by George Tucker has a father upset with his bookish son say "I'd not give [a fuck]
for all you've read". Originally printed as "I'd not give ------ for all you've read", scholars agree
that the words "a fuck" were removed, making the poem the first recorded instance of the now-
common phrase "I don't give a fuck".[20]

Farmer and Henley's 1893 dictionary of slang notes both the adverbial and adjectival forms of
fuck as similar to but "more violent" than bloody and indicating extreme insult, respectively.[13]

Rise of modern usage

Though it appeared in English lexicographer John Ash's 1775 A New and Complete Dictionary,
listed as "low" and "vulgar," and appearing with several definitions,[21] 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.[22]

The variant feck appeared in the English Dialect Dictionary, compiled by Joseph Wright in
1900.[23]