Fuck

For other uses, see Fuck (disambiguation).

Fuck is an English word that, as a verb, means "to have sexual intercourse". It is also a verb that means "to be cheated" ("I got fucked by a scam artist). As a noun it may describe a contemptible person (also fucker) or a sexual partner. It can be used as an interjection, and its participle fucking is sometimes used as a strong emphatic. The verb to fuck may be used transitively or intransitively, and it appears in compounds, including fuck off, fuck up, and fuck with. In less explicit usages (but still regarded as vulgar), fuck can mean to mess around, or to deal with unfairly or harshly. In a phrase such as "don't give a fuck", the word is the equivalent of "damn", in the sense of something having little value. In "what the fuck", it serves as a meaningless intensive.

The word's use is considered obscene in polite circles, but may be common in informal and domestic situations. It is unclear whether the word has always been considered vulgar, and 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.

Etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary states that the ultimate etymology is uncertain, but that the word is "probably cognate" with a number of native Germanic words with meanings involving striking, rubbing, and having sex.

Flen flyys and freris

The usually accepted first known occurrence is in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed some time 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 (= "Fleas, flies, and friars"). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Removing the substitution cipher on the phrase "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" yields non sunt in coeli, quia fvccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely" (fvccant is a fake Latin form). The phrase was coded likely because it accused some Church personnel of misbehaving; it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time.

John le Fucker

A man's name "John le Fucker" is said to be reported from AD 1278, but the report is doubtful: an email discussion on Linguist List says:

This name has been exhaustively argued over ... The "John le Fucker" reference first appears in Carl Buck's 1949 Indo-European dictionary. Buck does not supply a citation as to where he found the name. No one has subsequently found the manuscript in which it is alleged to have appeared. If the citation is genuine and not an error, it is most likely a spelling variant of "fulcher", meaning soldier.

Anglo-Saxon

An Anglo-Saxon charter granted by Offa, king of Mercia, dated AD 772, granting land at Bexhill, Sussex to a bishop, includes the text:

Þonne syndon þa gauolland þas utlandes into Bexlea in hiis locis qui appellantur hiis nominibus: on Berna hornan .iii. hida, on Wyrtlesham .i., on Ibbanhyrste .i., on Croghyrste .viii., on Hrigce .i., on Gyllingan .ii., on Fuccerham 7 and on Blacanbrocan .i., on Ikelesham .iii.;

Then the tax-lands of the outland belonging to Bexley are in these places which are called by these names: at Barnhorne 3 hides, at Wyrtlesham [Worsham farm near Bexhill ] 1, at Ibbanhyrst 1, at Crowhurst 8, at (Rye? The ridge north of Hastings?) 1, at Gillingham 2, at Fuccerham and at Blackbrook [may be Black Brooks in Westfield village just north of Hastings ] 1, at Icklesham 3.

The placename Fuccerham looks like either "the home (hām) of the fucker or fuckers" or "the enclosed pasture (hamm) of the fucker or fuckers", who may have been a once-notorious man, or a locally well-known stud male animal, or a group of such.

Older etymology

Via Germanic

The word fuck has probable cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German ficken (to fuck); Dutch fokken (to strike, to beget); dialectal Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectal Swedish fokka (to strike, to copulate) and fock (penis).

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 pugnus "fist". By reverse application of Grimm's law, this hypothetical root has the form *pug–. In early Proto-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.

The original Indo-European root for to copulate is likely to be *h₃yeb^h– or *h₃eyb^h–, which is attested in Sanskrit यभति (yabhati), Russian ебать (yebat'), Polish jebać, and Serbian jebati, among others: compare the Greek verb οἴφω (oíphō) = "I have sex with", and the Greek noun Ζέφυρος (Zéphyros) (which references a Greek belief that the west wind Zephyrus caused pregnancy).

Via Latin or Greek

• Other possible connections are to Latin fūtuere (almost exactly the same meaning as the English verb "to fuck"); but it would have to be explained how the word reached Scandinavia from Roman contact, and how the t became k. From fūtuere came French foutre, Catalan fotre, Italian fottere, Romanian futere, vulgar peninsular Spanish follar and joder, and Portuguese foder. However, there is considerable doubt and no clear lineage for these derivations. These roots, even if cognates, are not the original Indo-European word for to copulate, but Wayland Young (who agrees that these words are related) argues that they derive from the Indo-European *b^hu– or *b^hug– ("be", "become"), or as causative "create" [see Young, 1964]. A possible intermediate might be a Latin 4^th-declension verbal noun *fūtus, with possible meanings including "act of (pro)creating".
• A derivation from Latin facere = "to do", "to make" has been suggested.
• Greek phyō (φυω) has various meanings, including (of a man) "to beget", or (of a woman), "to give birth to". Its perfect tense pephyka (πεφυκα) has been likened to "fuck" and its equivalents in other Germanic languages.

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 was ever heard 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.
• That it came from any of:
  • "Fornication Under Carnal/Cardinal Knowledge"
  • "Fornication Under [the] Control/Consent/Command of the King"
  • "Fornication Under the Christian King"
  • "False Use of Carnal Knowledge"
  • "Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge"
  • "Felonious Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
  • "Full-On Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
  • "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
  • "Found Under Carnal Knowledge"
  • "Found Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
  • "Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", referring to the crime of rape.

Usage history

Main article: History of the word 'fuck'

Early usage

Its first known use as a verb meaning to have sexual intercourse is in "Flen flyys", written around 1475.

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).

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 the expression focative case (see vocative case). In Henry V (IV.iv), Pistol threatens to firk (strike) a soldier, a euphemism for fuck. A Midsummer Night's Dream uses the word "foot" to pun on the French equivalent, "foutre".

Rise of modern usage

Though it appeared in 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 (along with the word cunt) was in 1972. There is anecdotal evidence of its use during the American Civil War.

In 1928, D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover gained notoriety for its frequent use of the words fuck, fucked, and fucking.

Perhaps the earliest usage of the word in popular music was the 1938 Eddy Duchin release of the Louis Armstrong song "Ol' Man Mose". The words created a scandal at the time, resulting in sales of 170,000 copies during the Great Depression years when sales of 20,000 were considered blockbuster. The verse reads:

(We believe) He kicked the bucket,
(We believe) Yeah man, buck-buck-bucket,
(We believe) He kicked the bucket and ol' man mose is dead,
(We believe) Ahh, fuck it!
(We believe) Buck-buck-bucket,
(We believe) He kicked the bucket and ol' man mose is dead.

The liberal usage of the word (and other vulgarisms) by certain artists (such as James Joyce, Henry Miller, Lenny Bruce, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, in their Derek and Clive personas) 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 didn't meet until 1966 and did not discuss the word then. The rock group The Fugs named themselves after the Mailer euphemism.

The science fiction novel That Hideous Strength (1945), by C.S. Lewis, includes lines of dialog with the word bucking used the same way as fugging would be in Mailer's novel, published three years later.

In his novel Ulysses (1922), James Joyce used a sly spelling pun for fuck (and cunt as well) with the doggerel verse:

If you see Kay,
Tell him he may.
See you in tea,
Tell him from me.

Memphis Slim had a melancholy blues about lost love entitled "If You See Kay".

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger featured an early use of fuck you in print. First published in the United States in 1951, the novel remains controversial to this day due to its use of the word, standing at number 13 for the most banned books from 1990–2000 according to the American Library Association. The book offers a blunt portrayal of the main character's reaction to the existence of the word, and all that it means.

The Australian vaudeville comedian Roy Rene once had a comedy 'skit' where he would act with another person and would write the letter 'F' on a blackboard (on stage) and then ask his co-actor: 'What letter do you see' to which he would reply: 'K'. Mo would then say: 'Why is it that whenever I write F you see K?'

One of the earliest mainstream Hollywood movies to use the word fuck was director Robert Altman's irreverent antiwar film, MASH, released in 1970 at the height of the Vietnam War. During the football game sequence about three-quarters of the way through the film, one of the MASH linemen says to an 8063rd offensive player, "All right, bud, your fuckin' head is coming right off." Also, former Beatle John Lennon's 1971 release "Working Class Hero" featured use of the word, which was rare in music at the time and caused it to, at most, be played only in segments on the radio. In 2007, some 36 years later, Green Day did a cover of Lennon's song, which was censored for radio airplay, with the "Ph.." sound being audible but then phased out.

Former Saturday Night Live cast member Charles Rocket uttered the vulgarity in one of the earliest instances of its use on television, during a 1980 episode of the show, for which he was subsequently fired.

The word was used in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World by a fictional whaler describing pirates who burned his ship in 1802. The word is used occasionally in the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels of Patrick O'Brian, on which the film is based.

Comedian 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 in reference to a murderer:"Mad Fucker on the Loose", or even the murderer himself:"Stop me before I fuck again!" More popularly published is his famous "Filthy Words" routine, better known as "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television."

Use in politics

Fuck is not widely used in politics, and any use by notable politicians tends to produce controversy. Some events of this nature include:

• During the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago mayor Richard Daley became so enraged by a speech from Abraham A. Ribicoff that he shouted "Fuck you, you Jew motherfucker!" Daley would later claim that he was shouting "you fink, you" and calling Ribicoff a "faker".
• During a 1971 debate in the Canadian House of Commons, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau mouthed the words "fuck off" under his breath (perhaps almost silently) at Conservative MP John Lundrigan, while Lundrigan made some comments about unemployment. Afterward, when asked by a television reporter what he had been thinking, Mr. Trudeau famously replied "What is the nature of your thoughts, gentlemen, when you say "fuddle duddle" or something like that?". "Fuddle duddle" consequently became a catchphrase in Canadian media associated with Trudeau.
• The first accepted modern use in the British House of Commons came in 1982 when Reg Race, Labour MP for Wood Green, referred to adverts placed in local newsagents by prostitutes which read "Phone them and fuck them". Hansard, the full record of debates, printed "F*** them", but even this euphemism was deprecated by the Speaker, George Thomas.
• Shortly after Tony Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party, the then left-wing Labour MP George Galloway told a public meeting "I don't give a fuck what Tony Blair thinks" when questioned about the party's move to the right.
• In late 2003, US presidential candidate Senator John Kerry used the word fuck in an interview with Rolling Stone. Referring to his vote in favor of the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use military force in Iraq, Senator John Kerry stated, "I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did."
• In June 2004, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy to either "fuck off" or "go fuck yourself" during an exchange on the floor of the Senate, to which Patrick Leahy cried foul.
• In February 2006 (Australia), New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma, while awaiting the start of a Council of Australian Governments media conference in Canberra, was chatting to Victorian Premier Steve Bracks. Not realizing cameras were operating he was recorded as saying "Today? This fuckwit who's the new CEO of the Cross City Tunnel has ... been saying what controversy? There is no controversy." The exchange referred to the newly appointed CEO of a recently-opened toll road within Sydney.
• In April 2007, New Zealand Education Minister Steve Maharey said "fuck you" to a fellow MP during parliamentary question time. He apologized shortly afterwards.
• On January 31, 2007, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer angrily retorted to Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, "Listen, I'm a fucking steamroller, and I'll roll over you and anybody else." According to The New York Post, Spitzer confirmed the exchange the following day.

Use in marketing

In April 1997, clothing retailer French Connection began branding their clothes "fcuk" (usually written in lowercase). Though they insisted it was an acronym for French Connection United Kingdom, its similarity to the word "fuck" caused controversy. French Connection fully exploited this and produced an extremely popular range of t-shirts with messages such as "fcuk this", "hot as fcuk", "mile high fcuk", "fcuk me", "too busy to fcuk", "fcuk football", "fcuk fashion", "fcuk fear", "fcuk on the beach", "the joy of fcuk", etc.

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 (in reference to 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).

In 1983, pornographer Larry Flynt, representing himself before the U.S. Supreme Court in a libel case, shouted, "Fuck this court!" during the proceedings, and then called the justices "nothing but eight assholes and a token cunt" (referring to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor). Chief Justice Warren E. Burger had him arrested for contempt of court, but the charge was later dismissed on a technicality.

Use in public media

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 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. Even on cable television, which is not regulated by the FCC, few channels in the United States will broadcast the word fuck due to fear of backlash from advertisers or the FCC.

The first occurrence of "fuck" being spoken on British television was on 13 November 1965 when Kenneth Tynan said, during a live debate on the satirical BBC show BBC3, "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word 'fuck' would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden." This resulted in the BBC having to make a formal apology. It also instigated four House of Commons motions and a letter to the Queen signed by 133 Labour and Tory MPs. It also prompted morality campaigner, Mary Whitehouse, to comment that Tynan "ought to have his bottom smacked".

The British television show T.F.I Friday officially stood for "Thank Four It's Friday" (the reference to Four being Channel Four on which the show was broadcast). However, it was widely understood in fact to stand for "Thank Fuck It's Friday"; it has been suggested that it would have been broadcast with that title had it not been decided to broadcast it before the watershed. The show also holds the record for the most frequent use of the word fuck to a pre-watershed audience, owing to guest Shaun Ryder using the word 9 times whilst impersonating the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten, despite the best efforts of Channel 4. Ryder is now the only person to appear by name in the Channel 4 policy document. The show inspired another show named O.F.I Sunday, or "Oh Fuck It's Sunday". Although for decades the word was widely considered taboo on British television, at most only appearing in late night programmes and films on secondary channels BBC Two and Channel Four, and even then edited or faded out on occasion; by 2006 there appear to be few limitations on the use of the word after the 9pm watershed, and it is commonly used.

In 2004, the word reached a musical milestone when the song "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" by pop singer Eamon became the first song with an expletive in its title to enter the top 20 on the Billboard charts.

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, e.g. Fucked Up, Fuck... I'm Dead, Fuck the Facts, and The Fucking Champs; bands like Holy Fuck, Fuck, and the Fuck Buttons fall into the categories of more accessible forms of electronic rock and pop.

Holy fuck

"Holy fuck" is a widely used example of 'liturgical profanity' used interjectionally to express anger, contempt, disgust, or amazement. Usually vulgar. Noted by academics and used in literature , deriving its power from a combination of the sacred, holy, and the profane, fuck. An exclamation, similar to "holy shit!", but more offensive, also used informally for sex within a religious context.

It is notably used for its shock value in the mainstream movie Notting Hill starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant

Occurrence in machine mistranslations

The word fuck occurs sometimes in Chinese/English bilingual public notices in China as a machine translation of the Simplified Chinese character 干 which can also mean "dry" and "do", e.g. "spread to fuck the fruit" for "loose dried fruit" and "fuck the certain price of goods" for "dry foods price counter". The fault occurred in some versions of commonly-used Chinese to English machine translators, for example Jinshan (金山 = "Gold Mountain") and Kingsoft.

Common alternatives

Main article: Minced oath

In conversation or writing, reference to or use of the word fuck may be replaced by any of a large list of alternative words or phrases, including "the F-word" or "the F-Bomb" (a play on A-Bomb / H-Bomb), or simply, "eff" (as in "What the eff!" or "You eff-ing fool!"). In addition, there are many commonly used substitutes, such as flipping, frigging, fricking, freaking, feck, fudge or any of a number of similar sounding nonsense words. In print, there are alternatives such as, "F***", "F – – k", etc.; or the use of a string of non-alphanumeric characters, for example, "@$#*%!" and similar (especially favored in comic books).

A common replacement word used mainly on the internet is fsck, derived from the name of the Unix file system checking utility.

"Fuck" may be replaced by phonetically unrelated words:

• The science fiction series Red Dwarf uses smeg.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams uses zark.
• Farscape uses frel and frelling.
• The U.S. version of Life, the Universe and Everything uses Belgium.
• The film A Christmas Story uses fudge.
• The Irish sitcom Father Ted uses the acceptable slang feck.
• The highly popular comedy Meet the Parents spawned a 2004 sequel with the title, Meet the Fockers — one of the characters being named "Martha Focker," which is an allusion to "motherfucker."

Other languages

The word fuck is touted to be one of the few 'universal' words that can be uttered in any country in the world and yet be understood by anyone. Even so, different countries do have their own versions.

Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, the slang word fok has been adopted as an Afrikaans equivalent of fuck (and fokkof as "fuck off"), due to the influence of English media and language in South Africa. Coincidentally, the Afrikaans word neuk, which resembles the Dutch neuken, is used in the context of to strike.

Arabic

The pronunciation of the word fuck literally means jaw in Arabic. Arabs use a few words that have the same meaning as fuck, with most of them being country or region specific and not widely used by all Arabs or even the official Arabic language at all."Yoaasher" or "Yodaej" are official Arabic words that literally mean "to fuck with", as in "to have sex with someone".

Catalan

The translation for "fuck" in Catalan, the verb fotre, could allow a Catalan speaker to use few more verbs and still be understood. It can replace up to thirty verbs, including fer (do), which followed by the proper noun can replace even more verbs, for example: fer/fotre un dibuix can be used instead of dibuixar (draw).

Chinese languages

The Shanghainese verb and adjective 发格 fage (which treated as Chinese means "sends the standard") is derived from the English "fuck" and is used in the exasperated context of things or people "fucking up" or "being difficult." Although fage is often used pejoratively, the term has lost its sexual connotations. In Cantonese, the slang word 屌 diu2 is used in a similar way as the English word "fuck." Similar terms in Mandarin are 肏 cào (sometimes written 操), 幹 (simplified 干) gàn, and 搞 gǎo, the latter used more commonly in Taiwan.

Dutch

In Dutch, the cognate fokken means "to breed". In the past fokken was sometimes used to indicate sexual intercourse, but this is no longer the case. The literal translation of English "fuck" is neuken, and naaien (literally, "to sew") is a milder form roughly equivalent to "screw". The equivalent of "fucking" used as an all-purpose meaningless expletive is kut (kut can be translated as cunt ).

Recently a slang word "modderfokker" (literally: "one who breeds mud") has developed in imitation of English "motherfucker".

French

In French, the word for seal (the animal) is phoque; the word for foresail is foc. Their pronunciation in French resembles that of the word fuck in English. In France, phoque or foc sounds like the British pronunciation of fuck while in Quebec French, they sound like the North American English pronunciation, due to regional influences (although this actually is coincidental, and neither term has any relation to the English word). As well, the English term has been adopted as the adjective fucké, a slang term commonly used in Quebec French to describe something that is broken or off-kilter, or someone who is not in their right mind. It is not considered particularly offensive.

In Quebec, the French word tabernacle, meaning the church tabernacle, is often used in the same way as fuck in English, except in sexual-related usage. It is only used as interjection, noun or adverb. Other Québécois-French swear words (which are pretty much all of clergical origin) such as Christ, calice (chalice) and hostie (communion wafer or host) are much more versatile, particularly when used in combination. Although commonly used, these terms are considered much worse since they are blasphemous, rather than merely vulgar (the words would be comparable to the use of goddammit in the English language). They are widely used as the only remaining part of the backlash against the domination of Quebec society by the Roman Catholic church, which lasted until the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s.

Note that in Quebec French, English swearwords such as "shit" (or the French equivalent, merde) and "fuck" are considered to be much less offensive than if used in the same context for an English speaking person, since they are merely vulgar, or crude, and not blasphemous.

The French word foutre is an approximate translation to "fuck". It was commonly used as an interjection during the French Revolution, and often printed in some newspapers of this period. It is now mainly used in the passive participle adjectival form foutu(e) = "fucked".

German

The word "to fuck" literally translates as ficken, but the force of "fuck" usually equates with Scheiße (shit), or Mist (crap or manure). Nonetheless the exclamation "fuck" itself has been borrowed into German as a swear word and is in occasional to frequent use among some (especially younger) Germans. Ficken is used much in the same way to fuck is used in English and has a pronounced vulgar meaning for other (especially older) speakers.

Official censorship for language or voluntary "self-censorship" is far less common in German. The using of alternative expressions like "the F word" is virtually unknown. In addition, geographical regions differ with respect to usage and perceived profanity of swear words.

In the German language there are germanized forms of the word, like the pseudo-anglicism abgefuckt "fucked up". German as a language, especially in colloquial and often young slang, borrows deeply from English, including a limited number of English swear words; the two most common examples are fuck and shit (although North German Schiete also means "shit", but is not a loan word). Scheiße is fairly well understood as an expletive among English speakers, although often mis-pronounced with medial [z] instead of [s].

The verb ficken is historically used also in a non-sexual context, but still is related to friction. Examples include:

• ein Schwert ficken: the process of cleaning Slag, Tinder and Ash off a Sword's blade after blacksmithing it; this is done by hanging a Sandbag from the ceiling, lancing the blade through it and then quickly moving the sword back and forth until the blade is clean

More recently, the abbreviation FAQ has been used on German websites and forums, for example on the German wikipedia subsite. The pronunciation is not clearly defined: each letter can be pronounced separately or as one syllable (Error: {{IPA}}: missing language tag, which is similar to the English pronunciation of fuck). To avoid confusion regarding the abbreviation in itself, the acronym FAQ is often changed into the full term "Frequently Asked Questions" or into the literal German translation "Häufig gestellte Fragen" in formal everyday speech.

Interlingua

The English fuck can be used in Interlingua, given its widespread, international use. The actual Interlingua words for to fuck, however, are fottar and futuer.

Japanese

Japanese has the word fakku (ファック). The term is a foreign loan from English, but the pronunciation has been adapted to the Japanese phonology. Semantic usage is not as broad as English as it is only used as a slang term for sexual intercourse.

Korean

The Korean Language has the word ssibal (씨발), ssipal (씨팔) which loosely means "to have sexual intercourse with".

Norwegian

In Norwegian, the word fokk means either foresail or something that gets blown in strong wind; drifting snow (snøfokk), or streaks of foam and spray at sea. A Norwegian expletive which is somewhat analogous to the English fuck is the word faen. This is short for fanden, a Norwegian word for the devil. Knulle or pule is the most vulgar Norwegian colloquialism describing sexual intercourse.

Swedish

In Swedish, the morpheme fack is pronounced almost identically to the English fuck, and means a box or compartment, for example a letterbox for internal mail. As a prefix, the morpheme fack refers to something pertaining to a certain trade or profession, for example in the words facklitteratur (literature pertaining to a certain profession) and fackförening (trade union, colloquially referred to as facket (= "the fack")).

Fuck can also be used in colloquial Swedish as an English loan word, with basically the same meanings as in English.

Welsh

In the Welsh language fuck has been transliterated as ffwc or ffwcio which is basically pronounced the same and has the same meaning as in English.

See also

• Censorship
• Euphemism
• Four-letter word
• Fucking, Austria
• List of films that most frequently use the word "fuck"
• Profanity
• Sexual slang
• Madonna on Late Show with David Letterman
• For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
• FCUK
• Flick off

Further references

• Fabien Fuck, The Fuck Book, BookSurge (2007) ISBN 1419654551.
• 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 0194311988.
• Phillip J. Cunningham, Zakennayo!: The Real Japanese You Were Never Taught in School, Plume (1995) ISBN
• Wayland Young, Eros Denied: Sex in Western Society. Grove Press/Zebra Books, New York 1964.

External links

• Re: the Cheney-Leahy incident, slate.com discusses how American newspapers decide whether or not to print fuck.
• "Online Etymology Dictionary." Some etymological research on the word fuck.
• Usage of the Word Fuck (sound file), a famous (though factually incorrect) piece of Internet humor, variously and incorrectly attributed to Monty Python and George Carlin. Recorded anonymously with a Vivaldi soundtrack, it is believed to be the voice of Jack Wagner.
• Flash animation of the above sound file.
• YouTube version of the above sound file.
• Fuck, academic paper exploring the legal implications of the word, by Christopher M. Fairman, Ohio State University - Michael E. Moritz College of Law March 2006. Ohio State Public Law Working Paper No. 59.
• On Youtube, a funny explanation about the word fuck.
• Four Letter Film - "A challenging and provocative documentary takes a look on all sides of the infamous F-word."