Fuck (other)

''Fuck'' () is profanity in the English language that often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey 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'') are used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an infix, 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

It is unclear whether the word has always been considered a pejorative 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.

Nevertheless, the word has increasingly become less of a pejorative and more publicly acceptable, an example of the " dysphemism treadmill" or semantic drift known as ''melioration,'' wherein former pejoratives become inoffensive and commonplace. 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. 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 (verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) or meaning (literal or metaphorical) 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 does 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."

Etymology

Germanic cognates

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'."Fuck." ''OED Online''. Draft Revision, June 2008. Oxford University Press. Accessed August 26, 200
OED.com
http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/previous-updates/march-2008-update/

The word has probable cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German ('to fuck'); Dutch ('to breed', 'to beget'); Afrikaans ''fok'' ('to fuck'); Icelandic ''fokka'' ('to mess around', 'to rush'); dialectal Norwegian ('to copulate'); and dialectal Swedish ('to strike', 'to copulate') and ('penis'). This points to a possible etymology where Common Germanic ''*fuk(k)ōn-''from the verbal root ''*fug-'' ('to blow') comes from an Indo-European root ''*peuk-'', or ''*peuĝ-'' ('to strike'), cognate with non-Germanic words such as Latin ('I fight') or ('fist'). By application of Grimm's law, this hypothetical root also has the Pre-Germanic form *''pug-néh₂-'' ('to blow'), which is the etymon of, amongst others, Dutch ''fok(zeil)'' ('foresail'). There is a theory that ''fuck'' is most likely derived from German or Dutch roots, and is probably not derived from an Old English root.

False etymologies

One reason that the word ''fuck'' is difficult to trace etymologically is that it was used far more extensively in common speech, rather than in easily traceable documents or writings. There exist multiple urban legends that advance false etymologies, including the word allegedly being an acronym. One of these urban legends is that the word ''fuck'' originated in 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 of this legend alleges church clerks to have recorded the crime of "Forbidden Use of Carnal Knowledge". Another legend places the origin on a royal permission allegedly granted during the Middle Ages. Due to the Black Death and the consequent scarcity of resources, villages and towns supposedly attempted to control population growth by requiring permission to engage in intercourse. Royal permission (usually from a local magistrate or lord) is said to have required placing a sign visible from the road reading: "'' Fornicating/Fornication Under Consent of King",'' later shortened to ''FUCK''. This story is not supported by written evidence, and has been proven false, but has persisted in oral and literary traditions for many years.

Another legendary etymology, first made popular by the American radio show '' Car Talk,'' says that the phrase ''fuck you'' derives from ''pluck yew'' in connection with a misconception regarding the origins of the V sign. This misconception 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 misconception 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''. 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

In terms of its parts of speech, ''fuck'' has a very flexible role in English grammar, functioning as both a transitive and intransitive verb, and as an adjective, adverb, noun, and interjection.

Although 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. 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''). In the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', more than a hundred different senses, usages and collocations (like ''fuck around, fuck with s.o., fuck you, fuck me, fuck it'') are identified for ''fuck,'' its derived forms (like ''fucker, fuckee, fuckability''), and compounds with ''fuck'' (e.g. ''fuckfest, fuckhole, fuckface'').

Early usage

In 2015, Paul Booth argued he had 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. 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'' ('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'. 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. 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" (ll. 13–14).

The oldest known 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 abbot 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:
* Fottere: ''To jape, to sard, to fucke, to swive, to occupy.''
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.

A 1790 poem by St. George Tucker has a father upset with his bookish son say "I'd not give fuckfor 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.

According to an article in the journal '' Science'', research shows that when humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth, leading to an overbite in adults. This overbite is said to make it easier to produce "f" and "v" sounds, and humorously, cleared the way for words like "Fuck".

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 cadence of an English-language word. This is the use of ''fuck'' or more specifically ''fucking'' as an infix, or more properly, a tmesis

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