Fuck


Fuck is a profane English-language word 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 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, ', ', and fuck off.

Offensiveness

The word is considered obscene but is commonly used 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 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.
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. 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 belongs to a set of taboo words, the very utterance of which constitutes an affront, and any use of the word, regardless of its form or meaning 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."
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.

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 have sex".

Germanic cognates

The word has probable cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German ficken ; Dutch fokken ; dialectal Norwegian fukka, and dialectal Swedish focka and fock. 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". 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.

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. Several urban legends advance false etymologies that declare the word to be an acronym. One of these urban legends is that the word fuck came from Irish law. If a couple was caught committing adultery, the two would be punished "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge In the Nude", with "FUCKIN" written on the stocks above to denote the crime. A variant myth alleges church clerks to have recorded the crime of "Forbidden Use of Carnal Knowledge". Yet another is that of a royal permission granted in the Middle Ages: the Black Death and the scarcity of uncontaminated resources drove towns to control both human interactions and population growth. Supposedly many towns required permission to intermingle or to make babies. Hence, no couple could do either without royal permission which required placing a sign visible from the road that said "Fornicating Under Consent of King", which was later shortened to "FUCK". This story is hard to document, has persisted in oral and literary traditions for many years, but has been proven false.
A false etymology first made popular on the radio show Car Talk says that the phrase "fuck you" derives from "pluck yew" in connection with a myth regarding the V sign. This myth states that English archers believed that those who were captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they could no longer operate their longbows, and that the V sign was used by uncaptured and victorious archers in a display of defiance against the French. 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",, a phrase that evolved into the modern "fuck you". In any event, the word fuck has been in use far too long for some of these supposed origins to be possible. Since no such acronym was ever recorded before the 1960s according to the lexicographical work The F-Word, such claims create at best a so-called "backronym".

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. 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 as well as the "personal" sense. 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.

Early usage

In 2015, Dr. Paul Booth argued he had found " 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. 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. 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. 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". The phrase was probably encoded because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy; 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".
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".
The oldest occurrence of the word in adjectival form 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.
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:
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, to copulate; and "swive" had derived from earlier swīfan, to revolve i.e. to swivel. As late as the 18th century, the verb occupy was seldom used in print because it carried sexual overtones.
A 1790 poem by St. George Tucker has a father upset with his bookish son say "I'd not give 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".
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.

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, 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 was in 1972.
The variant feck appeared in the English Dialect Dictionary, compiled by Joseph Wright in 1900.

Modern usage

The modern usage and flexibility of fuck was established by the mid-to-late 19th century, and has been fairly stable since. Most literally, to fuck is to have sex, but it is also used as a more general expletive or intensifier.
Insertion of the trochaic word fucking can also be used as an exercise for diagnosing the of an English-language word. This is the use of fuck or more specifically fucking as an infix, or more properly, a tmesis. For example, the word in-fucking-credible sounds acceptable to the English ear, and is in fairly common use, while *incred-fucking-ible would sound very clumsy. Abso-fucking-lutely and motherfucking are also common uses of fuck as an affix. While neither dysphemistic nor connected to the sexual connotations of the word, even the vacuous usages are considered offensive and gratuitous, and censored in some media; for example, "None of your fucking business!" or "Shut the fuck up!" A common insult is "Get fucked", which in a less-offensive context would translate as "get stuffed". The word is one of the few that has colloquial usage as a verb, adverb, adjective, conjunction, interjection, noun, and pronoun.
on the island of Culebra, Puerto Rico
The word fuck is a component of many acronyms, some of which—like SNAFU and FUBAR—date as far back as World War II. MILF and variations of the first letter are widely seen in pornographic contexts. Many more recent coinages, such as the shorthand "?" for "what the fuck?", "STFU" for "shut the fuck up", or "FML" for "fuck my life", have been widely extant on the Internet, and may count as examples of internet memes. Many acronyms will also have an "F" or "MF" added to increase emphasis; for example, "OMG" becomes "OMFG". Abbreviated versions of the word do not tend to be considered offensive. Although the word is proclaimed vulgar, several comedians rely on fuck for comedic routines. George Carlin created several literary works based upon the word. Other comedians who use or have used the word consistently in their routines include Billy Connolly, Denis Leary, Lewis Black, Andrew Dice Clay, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Sam Kinison.

Examples of more recent usage

In 1928, English writer D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover gained notoriety for its frequent use of the words fuck, fucked, and fucking.
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger featured the use of fuck you in print. First published in the United States in 1951, the novel remains controversial to this day due in part to its use of the word, standing at number 13 for the most banned books from 1990 to 2000 according to the American Library Association.
The first documented use of the word fuck on live British television has been attributed to theatre critic Kenneth Tynan in 1965, though it has been claimed Irish playwright Brendan Behan used the word on Panorama in 1956 or the man who painted the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the River Lagan in Belfast, who in 1959 told Ulster TV's teatime magazine programme Roundabout that his job was "fucking boring". Controversy ensued in 1976 when Today host Bill Grundy interviewed the Sex Pistols, after guitarist Steve Jones called Grundy a "dirty fucker" and a "fucking rotter".
The word began to break into cinema when it was uttered once in the film Vapor and in two Andy Warhol films – Poor Little Rich Girl and My Hustler, and later in each of two 1967 British releases, Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's'isname. It was used several times in the 1969 British film Bronco Bullfrog. According to director Robert Altman, the first time the word "fuck" was used in a major American studio film was in 1970's M*A*S*H, spoken by Painless during the football match at the end of the film.

Use in politics

Fuck is not widely used in politics, and the use of the word by politicians often produces controversy. Some events include:
During the George W. Bush presidency a vehicular bumper sticker with the words Buck Fush gained some popularity in the US.

Use in marketing

In April 1997, clothing retailer French Connection began branding their clothes "fcuk", stating it was an acronym for "French Connection United Kingdom". Its similarity to the word "fuck" caused controversy. French Connection produced a range of T-shirts with messages such as "fcuk this", "hot as fcuk", "mile high fcuk", "fcuk me", etc.
In 2009, the European Union's OHIM trade marks agency disallowed a German brewery to market a beer called "Fucking Hell". They sued, and on 26 March 2010 got permission to market the beer. They argued it is actually named after the Austrian village of Fucking and the German term for light beer, hell.
Iancu v. Brunetti is a United States Supreme Court case in which the owner of the clothing brand FUCT sued the Patent and Trademark Office, which refused to trademark the name for being "scandalous" under the Lanham Act. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a provision in of the Act, denying registration to any trademarks seen as consisting of immoral or scandalous matter, was an unconstitutional restriction of applicants' freedom of speech.

Band names

The word "fuck" has been used in a number of band names, generally based on common compounds. Although most of these bands are in the aggressive, non-mainstream genres of punk and metal, others fall into the categories of more accessible forms of electronic rock and pop.

Holy fuck

"Holy fuck" is an example of 'liturgical profanity' used interjectionally to express anger, contempt, disgust, or amazement. Usually vulgar.

F-bomb

The term "dropping an F-bomb" usually refers to the unanticipated use of the word "fuck" in an unexpected setting, such as public media, a play on the nickname for the hydrogen bomb and the shock value that using the word "fuck" in discourse carries. The term was first reported in a newspaper in 1988 when Hall of Fame baseball catcher Gary Carter used it. In 2012 it was listed, for the first time, in the mainstream Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Censorship

In the United States, the word is frequently edited out of music and films when broadcast on TV, such as in the film The Big Lebowski, when John Goodman's character repeatedly yells, "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass". It was censored on television as "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps."
Still, in 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the 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 a slogan titled "Fuck the Draft". The conviction was upheld by the court of appeals and overturned by the Supreme Court. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15.

Common alternatives

In conversation or writing, reference to or use of the word fuck may be replaced by any of many alternative words or phrases, including "the F-word" or "the F-bomb", or simply, eff or f. Also, there are many commonly used substitutes, such as flipping, frigging, fricking, freaking, feck, fudge, flaming, forget or any of a number of similar-sounding nonsense words. In print, there are alternatives such as, "F***", "F––k", etc.; or a string of non-alphanumeric characters, for example, "@$#*%!" and similar.
A replacement word used mainly on the Internet is "fsck", derived from the name of the Unix file system checking utility. In Battlestar Galactica the bowdlerized form 'frack' was used as a substitute for fuck. The word was sometimes jokingly used as a curse by fans. Similarly, the word "frell" is used as a substitute on the TV show Farscape, and Dr. Elliot Reid has frequently used the substitute "frick" on the TV show Scrubs. Stu Braudy, a recurring character on Curb Your Enthusiasm played by Don Stark, is teased by Larry David for constantly using the substitute "freak".