[Origin: 1495–1505; akin to MD fokken to thrust, copulate with, Sw dial. focka to copulate with, strike, push, fock penis]
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fuck
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fuck
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A753527
Although this sounds like the most Anglo-Saxon of all Anglo-Saxon words, the origin of the f-word meaning 'sexual intercourse' is actually rather obscure. There is a legend that the old name for the crime of rape was 'Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge', and part of the punishment was that an abbreviation of the crime would be branded on the perpetrators head. Hence, people with 'F. U. C. K.' on their head were known to be rapists. A similar story is that during the time of the plague when it was necessary to increase the population a royal injunction was issued telling the common folk to 'Fornicate Under Command of the King.' These, however, would appear to be acronyms intentionally spelling out an existing word rather than new creations themselves.
Eric Partridge, a famous etymologist, has suggested that the Old German 'ficken' or 'fucken', meaning 'to strike or penetrate', was related to the Latin words for pugilist, puncture, and prick4 , or to the Latin 'futuere' which had the slang meaning 'to copulate'. There are also clearer links to Dutch where 'fokken' means breed and is applied to cattle, and to a Swedish dialect word 'fokken' which has the English meaning. Certainly, all the earliest uses of the word in English came via Scotland, suggesting a Scandinavian origin5.
Records from as early as 1278 identify a man called John Le-****** (which, considering people often had names to do with their occupations, makes the mind boggle), and it was certainly in common usage by the 16th Century, appearing in a dictionary, John Florio's A World of Words, in 1598. By the 18th century, it had became a vulgar term; It was even banned from the Oxford English Dictionary.
DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover (written in 1928) was the first serious (ie non-pornographic) book in English to use the word accurately and in context and was famously banned for over thirty years. In 1960, US publishers Grove Press won a court case permitting it to publish the book in America, meaning it was the first time the word had been legally used in print, while three years later, the ban was overturned in a British court in the infamous 'Lady Chatterly trial'. American author Norman Mailer used the euphemism 'fug' in The Naked and the Dead, and when famous wit Dorothy Parker met him at a party, she said, 'So you're the young man who can't spell f***?'
It has been recognised as one of the most versatile words in the English language, and can be put to use as an expletive, an adjective, a noun or a verb, as demonstrated in an email circular that has been widely distributed over the years.
Poet Laureate Philip Larkin used the word in the opening lines of one of his poems, writing one of those sentences which is simple, lucid and which cannot possibly be expressed in any other way:
'They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad,
They may not mean to, but they do'
Kenneth Tynan the enfant terrible of mid 20th century British cultural criticism was the first person to use the word on British TV, on the BBC no less, during a live discussion programme, sparking a major and significant debate in the British press. Everyone could see what the articles were about, their eyes were drawn by the asterisks.
The word is often shortened by Brits to just 'Eff', as in the phrase 'effing an blinding' to describe someone who swears a lot. ('Blinding' probably refers to an archaic usage 'God Blind Me' still heard in 'Cor Blimey').
The F of the f-word also appears in various quasi-military acronyms most of which can be traced back to and may even have been spawned by the second world war. There is 'FUBBED up' - 'F****d Up Beyond Belief'; FUBAR - 'F****d Up Beyond All Recognition'; FUNDY - 'F****d Up, Not Dead Yet' - as used on the notes of patients in hospitals who were, well... FUNDY. There is also: 'NFW' - 'No F***ing Way'; and 'SNAFU - 'Situation Normal, All F****d Up'. This last one is reputed to be the origin of 'naff', which was popularised in Britain in the 1970s programme Porridge, and reportedly used by Princess Anne6. In recent years, it has also come into gay parlance to disparagingly refer to heterosexuals - standing for 'not available for f***ing' or, less commonly, 'not a f***ing fairy'.
In 1999, Conservative Future - the youth wing of the Conservative Party - started using the logo 'CFUK'. Sadly, this got them into trouble with the clothing company French Connection UK, who had recently rebranded themselves 'fcuk'. It is strange to think that there may be an entire generation who, like Norman Mailer, cannot spell the word.
A phrase that, until recently, was almost exclusively American, is 'mother-f****r'. Despite sounding very Oedipal, this does not have Freudian derivations. The word was apparently coined by African slaves to describe the slave owners who had raped the slave's mothers. Simple as that.
From the Middle English for 'wriggle' or the Old French for 'rub', 'frig' is sometimes used as a euphemism for 'F***', at other times used to mean 'masturbate'; usually only seen as a gerundive (or verbal adjective) 'frigging'. The Sex Pistols did a version of The Good Ship Venus with the chorus 'Frigging in the rigging 'cos there's f*** all else to do'.
Literally 'one who commits buggery' (anal sex), 'bugger' derives from Bulgaria and the Bogomils. These were originally a heretic Christian sect who were stigmatised as sodomites. Section 12 of the UK 1956 sexual offences act refers to buggery. According to this, buggery is sexual intercourse between males or between male and female in an 'unnatural manner', or between male or female with an animal in any manner whatsoever. This word is often used affectionately, as in 'lucky bugger'; 'jammy bugger'; 'flash bugger'; 'old bugger' and so on, and is sometimes softened to 'beggar'.
The famous and probably apocryphal epitaph says, 'Under this sod, lies another'. Sod means turf, but here is an abbreviation for 'Sodomite'. Sodomy is, like 'bugger', anal sex, and the word 'Sodomite' refers to the population of the Old Testament city Sodom which was destroyed by God because of the sinful ways of its inhabitants. He destroyed its twin town Gomorrah at the same time, and it is tempting to wonder what the people of Gomorrah did to be ranked with the Sodomites. Schoolboys also used to snigger at the Good King Wenceslas verse which goes:
In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed
This was also the word which brought about the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde. The Marquis of Queensbury was the father of Wilde's young lover Bosie, and in a rage he accused Wilde on paper of posing as a 'Somodite' (so not only was he narrow-minded, he couldn't spell either). Bosie encouraged Wilde to sue for libel, but the truth is no libel and when it became clear that Wilde was indeed a sodomite, he was in turn tried and jailed for it.
In recent years, an alternative to the f-word has grown in popularity, largely thanks to the Austin Powers films. 'Shag' has a dozen or so definitions that are completely non-sexual though; one comes from the Old Norse for beard, hence 'shaggy' to describe someone or something that looks loose and unkempt (cf 'shag-pile carpets'). There are the small marine birds called shags (Phalacrocorax aristotelis or Phalacrocorax punctatus) of Europe and North Africa, which are related to the cormorant. The famous Liver Birds on the crest of Liverpool are inspired by these river waders. 'Shag' is also a kind of coarse tobacco, so it should be possible to go into a tobacconist and ask the person behind the counter to give you their best shag without being arrested. In 1987, the American soul group The Tams had a Top 30 UK hit with a song called There Ain't Nothing Like Shaggin'. They were probably rather puzzled to hear that what they regarded as an innocent little ditty about a dance craze was having trouble getting airplay in Britain. And you would think that Americans in the entertainment industry would have learned to check the titles of their movies and indeed the names of their bands and songs for international innuendo. Mind you, it must be tempting to mislead them if you are the person who they ask for the advice.
Although this sounds like the most Anglo-Saxon of all Anglo-Saxon words, the origin of the f-word meaning 'sexual intercourse' is actually rather obscure. There is a legend that the old name for the crime of rape was 'Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge', and part of the punishment was that an abbreviation of the crime would be branded on the perpetrators head. Hence, people with 'F. U. C. K.' on their head were known to be rapists. A similar story is that during the time of the plague when it was necessary to increase the population a royal injunction was issued telling the common folk to 'Fornicate Under Command of the King.' These, however, would appear to be acronyms intentionally spelling out an existing word rather than new creations themselves.
Eric Partridge, a famous etymologist, has suggested that the Old German 'ficken' or 'fucken', meaning 'to strike or penetrate', was related to the Latin words for pugilist, puncture, and prick4 , or to the Latin 'futuere' which had the slang meaning 'to copulate'. There are also clearer links to Dutch where 'fokken' means breed and is applied to cattle, and to a Swedish dialect word 'fokken' which has the English meaning. Certainly, all the earliest uses of the word in English came via Scotland, suggesting a Scandinavian origin5.
Records from as early as 1278 identify a man called John Le-****** (which, considering people often had names to do with their occupations, makes the mind boggle), and it was certainly in common usage by the 16th Century, appearing in a dictionary, John Florio's A World of Words, in 1598. By the 18th century, it had became a vulgar term; It was even banned from the Oxford English Dictionary.
DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover (written in 1928) was the first serious (ie non-pornographic) book in English to use the word accurately and in context and was famously banned for over thirty years. In 1960, US publishers Grove Press won a court case permitting it to publish the book in America, meaning it was the first time the word had been legally used in print, while three years later, the ban was overturned in a British court in the infamous 'Lady Chatterly trial'. American author Norman Mailer used the euphemism 'fug' in The Naked and the Dead, and when famous wit Dorothy Parker met him at a party, she said, 'So you're the young man who can't spell f***?'
It has been recognised as one of the most versatile words in the English language, and can be put to use as an expletive, an adjective, a noun or a verb, as demonstrated in an email circular that has been widely distributed over the years.
Poet Laureate Philip Larkin used the word in the opening lines of one of his poems, writing one of those sentences which is simple, lucid and which cannot possibly be expressed in any other way:
'They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad,
They may not mean to, but they do'
Kenneth Tynan the enfant terrible of mid 20th century British cultural criticism was the first person to use the word on British TV, on the BBC no less, during a live discussion programme, sparking a major and significant debate in the British press. Everyone could see what the articles were about, their eyes were drawn by the asterisks.
The word is often shortened by Brits to just 'Eff', as in the phrase 'effing an blinding' to describe someone who swears a lot. ('Blinding' probably refers to an archaic usage 'God Blind Me' still heard in 'Cor Blimey').
The F of the f-word also appears in various quasi-military acronyms most of which can be traced back to and may even have been spawned by the second world war. There is 'FUBBED up' - 'F****d Up Beyond Belief'; FUBAR - 'F****d Up Beyond All Recognition'; FUNDY - 'F****d Up, Not Dead Yet' - as used on the notes of patients in hospitals who were, well... FUNDY. There is also: 'NFW' - 'No F***ing Way'; and 'SNAFU - 'Situation Normal, All F****d Up'. This last one is reputed to be the origin of 'naff', which was popularised in Britain in the 1970s programme Porridge, and reportedly used by Princess Anne6. In recent years, it has also come into gay parlance to disparagingly refer to heterosexuals - standing for 'not available for f***ing' or, less commonly, 'not a f***ing fairy'.
In 1999, Conservative Future - the youth wing of the Conservative Party - started using the logo 'CFUK'. Sadly, this got them into trouble with the clothing company French Connection UK, who had recently rebranded themselves 'fcuk'. It is strange to think that there may be an entire generation who, like Norman Mailer, cannot spell the word.
A phrase that, until recently, was almost exclusively American, is 'mother-f****r'. Despite sounding very Oedipal, this does not have Freudian derivations. The word was apparently coined by African slaves to describe the slave owners who had raped the slave's mothers. Simple as that.
From the Middle English for 'wriggle' or the Old French for 'rub', 'frig' is sometimes used as a euphemism for 'F***', at other times used to mean 'masturbate'; usually only seen as a gerundive (or verbal adjective) 'frigging'. The Sex Pistols did a version of The Good Ship Venus with the chorus 'Frigging in the rigging 'cos there's f*** all else to do'.
Literally 'one who commits buggery' (anal sex), 'bugger' derives from Bulgaria and the Bogomils. These were originally a heretic Christian sect who were stigmatised as sodomites. Section 12 of the UK 1956 sexual offences act refers to buggery. According to this, buggery is sexual intercourse between males or between male and female in an 'unnatural manner', or between male or female with an animal in any manner whatsoever. This word is often used affectionately, as in 'lucky bugger'; 'jammy bugger'; 'flash bugger'; 'old bugger' and so on, and is sometimes softened to 'beggar'.
The famous and probably apocryphal epitaph says, 'Under this sod, lies another'. Sod means turf, but here is an abbreviation for 'Sodomite'. Sodomy is, like 'bugger', anal sex, and the word 'Sodomite' refers to the population of the Old Testament city Sodom which was destroyed by God because of the sinful ways of its inhabitants. He destroyed its twin town Gomorrah at the same time, and it is tempting to wonder what the people of Gomorrah did to be ranked with the Sodomites. Schoolboys also used to snigger at the Good King Wenceslas verse which goes:
In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed
This was also the word which brought about the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde. The Marquis of Queensbury was the father of Wilde's young lover Bosie, and in a rage he accused Wilde on paper of posing as a 'Somodite' (so not only was he narrow-minded, he couldn't spell either). Bosie encouraged Wilde to sue for libel, but the truth is no libel and when it became clear that Wilde was indeed a sodomite, he was in turn tried and jailed for it.
In recent years, an alternative to the f-word has grown in popularity, largely thanks to the Austin Powers films. 'Shag' has a dozen or so definitions that are completely non-sexual though; one comes from the Old Norse for beard, hence 'shaggy' to describe someone or something that looks loose and unkempt (cf 'shag-pile carpets'). There are the small marine birds called shags (Phalacrocorax aristotelis or Phalacrocorax punctatus) of Europe and North Africa, which are related to the cormorant. The famous Liver Birds on the crest of Liverpool are inspired by these river waders. 'Shag' is also a kind of coarse tobacco, so it should be possible to go into a tobacconist and ask the person behind the counter to give you their best shag without being arrested. In 1987, the American soul group The Tams had a Top 30 UK hit with a song called There Ain't Nothing Like Shaggin'. They were probably rather puzzled to hear that what they regarded as an innocent little ditty about a dance craze was having trouble getting airplay in Britain. And you would think that Americans in the entertainment industry would have learned to check the titles of their movies and indeed the names of their bands and songs for international innuendo. Mind you, it must be tempting to mislead them if you are the person who they ask for the advice.
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the newspaper is wrong. the definitive dictionary, the Oxford English dictionary, states that the word is derived from the dutch meaning to strike, especially in refering to copulating cattle. I don't have access to it online anymore since I'm graduated from IL some time ago. We had to research the origin of our favorite cuss words for ENG 303 History of the England Language course. Several other people in the class research "fuck" as well.
In fact, FUCK was originally spelled FUG in early English. The numerous other supposed origins are urban legends.
In fact, FUCK was originally spelled FUG in early English. The numerous other supposed origins are urban legends.
