Fuck

For other senses of this word, see fuck (disambiguation).

"Fuck" is an English word which, when used literally as a verb, means "to have sexual intercourse". It is generally considered one of the most vulgar words in the English language and a classic example of the swear word. Because of its offensive nature it is sometimes referred to as the "f-word" or "f-bomb".

It is unclear whether the word had always been considered vulgar, and if not, when it first started to be considered vulgar. 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"[1]. Other evidence indicates that it may have become vulgar as early as the 16th century in England. 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.

In contemporary usage, the versatility of the word is such that it is can be used as a verb (to fuck), noun (a fuck), adjective (fucking), adverb (this car won't fucking drive) or interjection (Fuck!). Fuck is also one of the few words in standard English commonly used as an infix, as in 'absofuckinglutely' or 'infuckingcredible', along with several other expletive infixes. (The 'flexible' characteristic of the word was a popular online joke through the "History of the F-Word" flash video)

Etymology

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

The first known occurrence, in code, 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 [the friars] are not in heaven, because". 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 vs 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 because they fuck wives of Ely" (a city near Cambridge). (Available, with minor adjustments to the translation, at The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition). The phrase was coded because of its meaning; it is uncertain to what extent the word itself was considered acceptable.

Other possible connections are to Latin futuere (hence the French foutre, the Catalan fotre, the Italian fottere, the Romanian fute, 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 copulate; that root is likely *h³yebh-, ("h³" is the H3 laryngeal) which is attested in Sanskrit (yabhati) and the Slavic languages (Russian yebat`, Polish jebać, Serbian јебати (jebati)), 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". [Young, 1964]

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, "foc[c]ia/focac[c]ia", 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). Or perhaps Latin "futuere" came from the root "fu", Common Indo-European "bhu", meaning "be, become" and originally referred to procreation.

False etymologies

There are several urban-legend fake etymologies postulating an acronymic origin for the word. One legend holds 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", "Fornication Under [the] Control/Consent/Command of the King," or "For Unlawful 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", "For Using Carnal Knowledge", "Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge", "Fornication Under the Christian King", "Full Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", "False Use of Carnal Knowledge" and "Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", a label supposedly applied to the crime of rape. In some reports, there are tombstones around English cemeteries that had the word fuck engraved in uppercase letters. These referred to those who were put to death for crimes against the state and the church. In another story, a sign reading "Fornication Under Consent of the King" was supposedly placed on signs above houses in medieval Britain during times of population control and was special permission given to knights (droit de seigneur), by their king, when a knight wished to have sex with a woman.

None of these acronyms were 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 for too long for some of these supposed origins to be possible. It should also be noted that acronyms themselves were rare prior to the 20th century.

Another urban legend suggests that the official name of Friends University in Wichita, Kansas is Friends University of Central Kansas. In fact, it is simply Friends University (or FU).

See also

• Snopes Urban Legend Archive entry
• About.com Urban Legend and Folklore article

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

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 use of the word "fuck" on British television came on November 13, 1965 on the satirical show "BBC-3" (no relation to the present channel of that name). The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan declared, apropos of nothing, that "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word 'fuck' would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.".

It is believed that the first rock song to have the word fuck is The Doors' song "The End" on their self-titled 1967 album "The Doors". The line containing the word is "Mother, I want to fuck you". Jim Morrison screams out the last two words so that they can't be heard clearly. Another early example of the use of fuck is Beatle John Lennon's 1970 song "Working Class Hero" in the lines:

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school

They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool

'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

The Beatles also seem to have used the word in the song Revolution 9 in the line "join the fucking navy."

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.

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" ("make fuck, not kill") 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!" More popularly published is his famous "Filthy Words" routine, better known as "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television."

One of the earliest mainstream Hollywood films to use the word fuck was 20th Century Fox's MASH (during a football game segment), directed by Robert Altman and released in 1970.

Former Saturday Night Live cast member Charles Rocket uttered the epithet in one of the earliest instances of its use on television, during an episode of Saturday Night Live '80 (1980), for which he was subsequently fired.

The Sopranos holds the dubious title of being the first television show to win the Best Drama Emmy Award in which characters repeatedly say fuck and many variations of the word as well. (The show is not on network television, it is on HBO.)

The show that holds the record for the most numerous utterances of the word on television is the HBO series Deadwood . The constant use of the word soon inspired a web site dedicated to keeping track of the Deadwood Fuck Count, which has recorded about 1.54 "fucks" per minute. Many of those expletives, and others colorful phrases, are spoken by the character Al Swearengen, played by Ian McShane, who won the 2005 Golden Globe Award for best actor in a television drama for his role in Deadwood.

A few films such as Totally Fucked Up and So Fucking What (Also called SFW) have used the word in their titles.

Comedy Central will sometimes show movies with uncensored usage of the word after 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time, most frequently on Saturdays (technically Sunday morning). This is the only time slot where the network will air South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut

Video games, like movies, went through a long period where the word was never used, but this has changed in recent years. The first use of the word may have been in Sega's Crazy Taxi, released as an arcade game in 1999, then for the Dreamcast in 2000 and other consoles in 2001. The game's punk rock soundtrack included the song "Way Down the Line" by The Offspring, with the words "You'll fuck up just like your parents did" appearing completely uncensored. The game received a T (for Teen) rating from the ESRB. The fact that the word was sung in a song (and not spoken in dialogue), as well as the fact that it is not used profusely or frequently in the song, probably contributed to this mild rating. In 2002, the PlayStation 2 game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City also included the word in its music's lyrics, in the song Never Say Never by Romeo Void, containing the line "That man could give a fuck about the grin on your face". The game also included the word in print, as there is a room in the game with posters displaying the phrases "Absolutely fucking brilliant" and "It fucking rocks". Because this room is fairly obscure and not a major part of the gameplay, it's quite likely this was intended to be an Easter egg, and it may have escaped the attention of the ESRB (who still gave it an M, for Mature, rating, because of its graphic violence and sexual innuendo). Its sequel, however, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, may have definitively broken down the prophanity barrier in video games by featuring the word "fuck" pervasively and constantly, not only in the game's soundtrack (in several songs by gangsta rap artists, as well as one by Rage Against the Machine), but also throughout the game's dialogue, which is both audible (recorded by voice actors) and legible (optionally appearing as on-screen subtitles).

Use in politics

Fuck is not widely used in politics, and because of this, 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 House of Commons, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau mouthed the words "fuck off" under his breath (perhaps silently) at Conservative MP John Lundrigan, while Lundrigan made some comments about unemployment. When questioned by a television reporter about it, afterward, Mr. Trudeau used "fuddle duddle" to refer to what he had mouthed, introducing that term into the Canadian lexicon, as a euphemism for "fuck". He did not deny his use of the word, however.
• The first modern use in the British House of Commons came in 1982 when Reg Race, 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.
• In March 2002, President of the United States, George W. Bush referred to the U.S. focus on Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, “fuck Saddam; we're taking him out,” at a Senate Republican Policy lunch on Capitol Hill.[2]
• 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, Sen. 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."[3]
• In June 2004, US 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. [4]
• In February 2006, New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma while awaiting the start of a COAG 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."[5] The exchange referred to the newly appointed CEO of a recently-opened toll road within Sydney.

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).

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. Even on cable television, which is not regulated by the FCC, few channels will broadcast the word "fuck" because of a fear of backlash from advertisers.

In some television science fiction shows, altered versions of the word have been created to allow characters to express themselves without getting into trouble with the censors. For example, in Farscape the word is "frell", and in Battlestar Galactica the word is "frak", while Red Dwarf uses "smeg" in a similar context. In the series Firefly, the characters will often switch to Mandarin to swear, again avoiding any accusations of indecency. A similar ploy came in the British sitcom Father Ted, where the characters say "feck" regularly. Also on the NBC comedy "Scrubs" Elliot Reid sometimes says frick to show frustration.

British television show T.F.I Friday was widely known to stand for "Thank Fuck It's Friday", the title having been shortened because the show was to be broadcast before the watershed (although, officially, T.F.I. Friday stood for "Thank Four It's Friday", (Channel) Four being the station on which it was broadcast). 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 frontman of the band The Sex Pistols, 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".

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 "F word", "F Bomb" (a play off of the A-Bomb and H-Bomb) and "Frack/Frel/fetching/freaking/fricking/friggin/flocking/flippin/fluffing/fecking/effing/hecking/cruding". It may also be called "F sharp" (as in the music note). There are alternatives such as, F**k & F---. Fucking can be described as, "Effing".

Interlingual homophony

German

Although the word "to fuck" literally translates as "ficken", and the exclamation of "fuck" translates usually as "Scheiße" (literally shit) or "Mist" (literally crap), 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. It is to be noted, however, that "ficken" and all its derivatives, notably the adverbial "verfickt" (for "fucking") is being rather frequently used in German, especially among young people, in the same way "fuck" is being used in vulgar English. However, Altavista's babel fish on-line translator uses the word bumsen for the German translation of "fuck" and "to fuck", bumser for "fucker" and scheisse for "fucking".

Norwegian

In Norwegian, the 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 [6]. The pronunciation is similar to how the Irish would say fuck.

Swedish

In Swedish, the morpheme fack is pronounced almost identically to the English fuck, and has several meanings. The word fack, means either 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 (litterature pertaining to a certain profession) and fackförening (trade union, colloquially referred to as facket). These words can sometimes be unfortunate for people who have a tendency to code-switch between Swedish and English.

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

Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, the slang word fok has been adopted as an Afrikaans equivalent of fuck, due to the influence English media and language in South Africa. Coincidentally, the Afrikaans word for "subject" (in the sense of an area of knowledge) is vak. Its pronunciation resembles that of the word fuck in English.

French

In French, the word for seal (the animal) is phoque. Its pronunciation in French resembles that of the word fuck in English. In France French, phoque sounds like the British pronunciation of fuck while in Quebec French, phoque sounds like the North American pronunciation, due to areal influences (although this actually is coincidental, and has no 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.

An abbreviation of the French word for university (faculté) is fac; in the movie L'Auberge espagnole, it is mistaken for fuck by one of the British characters.

Latin

In Latin, the verbs 'to make' and 'to do' both translate as facere (from the verb "facio"). Except for the unaspirated hard 'c', pronunciation (of the stem) is the same.

Similar words in other languages

Dutch

In Dutch the first person singular of the verb "fokken", meaning "to breed", "Ik fok" sounds similar to "(I) fuck" as spoken by an English speaker with a Northern accent. Dutch people who don't know the English variant of "fokken" often just use the Dutch verb and try to make it sound English.

The Dutch wartime minister Gerbrandy, whose English was rather bad, once said to the British Prime-Minister Churchill that he "fucks horses". He meant to say that he breeds horses.

However, the direct translation of "to fuck" would be "neuken" it is considered less offensive than the same word in English, like most Dutch profanity.

Hebrew

In Hebrew, the equivalent word is lezayen, and its origin (that was inoffensive) is old enough to appear in the Hebrew Bible in the term kley zayin (tools of armament -- weaponry). Zayin, the weapon, has eventually become a colloquial and rude term for the penis, and that change is what the copulation-related words derive from in Hebrew. Similarly to English, the Hebrew word can be used as most any part of speech: a verb (lezayen), a noun (ziyun), an adjective (mezuyan or mizdayen), but not as an adverb nor an infix and not even a common expletive.

The term kley zayin has fallen out of use in modern-day Hebrew and is virtually never used.

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

• Censorship
• Euphemism
• Feck
• Foobar
• Four-letter word
• fcuk
• Fucking, Austria
• List of allusions to the word "fuck"
• List of films ordered by uses of the word "fuck"
• Madonna on Letterman
• Motherfucker
• Profanity
• Ratfucking
• Seven dirty words
• Sexual slang
• SNAFU
• Tmesis
• Brainfuck
• BFG
• fsck
• Fuck Truck
• RTFM
• STFU
• WTF

External links

• American Heritage Dictionary, see "Word History" for an enciphered(!) usage of the word in the ribald sixteenth-century poem, Flen flyys.
• effing
• fuck
• Re: the Cheney-Leahy incident, slate.com discusses how newspapers decide whether or not to print "fuck."
• Flash dissertation about the word "Fuck"
• "Online Etymology Dictionary." Some Etymology Research
• Usage of the Word Fuck (sound file), a famous 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. [7]
• Uses of the word Fuck
• All About Fuck A collection of uses for the word Fuck.
• Fuck, academic paper exploring the legal implications of the word, by Christopher M. Fairburn, Ohio State University - Michael E. Moritz College of Law March 2006. Ohio State Public Law Working Paper No. 59