Etymologically
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fuck

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Pronunciation

Etymology

Its origin is not known for certain.[2][3] It first appears in a coded line of the poem “Flen flyys”, written in mixed Latin and English before 1500, where the cipher “gxddbov” stands for “fuccant”, a mock-Latin “they fuck”.[4][5] Merriam-Webster compares Dutch fokken (“to breed (cattle)”) and Swedish dialectal fokka (“to copulate”),[6] and calls it Germanic, akin to Middle Dutch fokken (“to push, thrust, copulate”).[7] Liberman places it among many Germanic verbs with roots such as fik-, fak-, fuk- and fok- whose basic meaning is “to move back and forth”, often also “to cheat”, among them German ficken.[8] He concludes that the English verb was most probably borrowed from Low German rather than a native word going back to Old English, and that it has no cognates outside Germanic.[8] He and Green both reject a link with Latin pugnāre (“to fight, strike”), which Partridge had suggested.[8][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

To copulate: about 1503 according to the OED, in the form fukkit,[5][9] while Green's first printed example is from William Dunbar in 1508.[3] The spelling fuck appears in 1535 in Sir David Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits.[5] Etymonline mentions a possible use in an English court record of 1310 and the surname John le Fucker from 1278, which may have other explanations.[5]

Semantic evolution

The word was taboo from the first: its earliest appearance is in code.[4] John Florio listed it in his dictionary of 1598,[3][10] but it has been treated as a slang or taboo term since about 1690,[3] Johnson left it out, and no English dictionary included it between 1795 and 1965;[5] the original OED also omitted it.[5] In the 18th century it was usually printed as f––k.[3] It returned to literature in Joyce's Ulysses (1922),[3] and the Penguin dictionary printed it in 1965, followed by the American Heritage Dictionary in 1969.[5] The noun, “an act of copulation”, is found from 1663[7][11] or 1680,[9] and “a person considered as a sexual partner” from 1874.[9][5] Profane use in curses dates from 1922, not give a fuck and “to blunder” from 1929,[9] fuck-up from 1958 and fuck-all from 1960.[9] Fucking as a mere intensive is first recorded about 1568.[9]

Timeline

  • before 1500 – coded fuccant (“Flen flyys”).[4]
  • c. 1503 – fukkit, to copulate.[9]
  • 1508 – first printed use (Dunbar).[3]
  • 1535 – the spelling fuck (Lyndsay).[5]
  • c. 1568 – fucking.[9]
  • 1598 – in Florio's dictionary.[3]
  • 1663 – noun, an act of copulation.[7]
  • 1874 – a person as a sexual partner.[9]
  • 1922 – in curses, and in Ulysses.[9][3]
  • 1929 – not give a fuck, and “to blunder”.[9]
  • 1960 – fuck-all.[9]

Modern meaning

Verb

  1. (coarse slang) To have sexual intercourse (with).
  2. (coarse slang) To treat unfairly; to victimize.
  3. (coarse slang) To spoil or ruin; with up, to bungle.
  4. (coarse slang) Used in curses and to dismiss someone angrily.

Noun

  1. (coarse slang) An act of sexual intercourse.
  2. (coarse slang) A sexual partner; also, a despised person.
  3. (coarse slang) The least amount: not give a fuck.

Interjection

  1. (coarse slang) Expressing extreme anger or annoyance.

Word family

  • fucky

Usage notes

Hendrickson rejects the popular story that the word comes from a police record entry “for unlawful carnal knowledge”.[10]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  6. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ a b c Liberman, Anatoly (2008), An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ a b Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
  11. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)