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woman's genitals (IPA:/kʌnt/) is an English language vulgarism referring generally to the female genitalia.[1] The earliest citation of this usage in the Oxford English Dictionary, circa 1230, refers to the London street known as “Gropewoman's genitals Lane”.

“woman's genitals” is also used informally as a derogatory epithet in referring to either sex, but this usage is relatively recent, dating back only as far as the late nineteenth century.[2] The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines “woman's genitals” as “an unpleasant or stupid person”, whereas Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a disparaging term for a woman” and “a woman regarded as a sexual object”; the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English defines it as “a despicable man”.

The word appears to have been in common usage during the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century. After a period of disuse, usage became more frequent in the twentieth century and, in particular, in parallel with the rise of popular literature and pervasive media. The term also has various other derived uses and, like “****” and its derivatives, has been used mutatis mutandis as noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, participle and other parts of speech.

Contents [hide]

1 Etymology

2 Offensiveness

2.1 Generally

2.2 Feminist perspectives

3 Usage: pre-20th century

4 Usage: modern

4.1 In modern literature

4.2 Usage by Meaning

4.2.1 Referring to women

4.2.2 Referring to men

4.2.3 Referring to inanimate objects

4.2.4 Other uses

4.3 Usage in modern popular culture

4.3.1 Politics

4.3.2 Theatre

4.3.3 Television

4.3.4 Film

4.3.5 Comedy

4.3.6 Popular music

4.3.7 Computer/Video Games

5 Linguistic variants and derivatives

5.1 Spoonerisms and acronyms

5.2 Puns

5.3 Rhyming slang

6 Other meanings

6.1 Nautical usage

6.2 US military usage

6.3 Hot-metal printing

6.4 Others

7 Notes and references

8 Further reading

9 External links

Etymology

Although it has been said that “etymologists are unlikely to come to an agreement about the origins of woman's genitals any time soon”,[3] it is most usually stated to derive from a Germanic word (Proto-Germanic *kunton), which appeared as kunta in Old Norse, although the Proto-Germanic form itself is of uncertain origin.[4] In Middle English it appeared with many different spellings such as woman's genitalse and queynte, which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation of the word. There are cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish, Faroese and Old Norwegian dialect kunta; West Frisian and Middle Low German kunte; Middle Dutch conte; Dutch kut; Middle Low German kutte; Middle High German kotze (prostitute); German kott, and perhaps Old English cot. While kont in Dutch refers to the bumocks, kut is considered far less offensive in Dutch-speaking areas than woman's genitals is in the English speaking world. The etymology of the Proto-Germanic term is disputed. It may have arisen by Grimm’s law operating on the Proto-Indo-European root *gen/gon = “create, become” seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Proto-Indo-European root *gwneH2/guneH2 (Greek gunê) = “woman” seen in gynaecology. Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus (vulva), and its derivatives French con, Spanish coño, and Portuguese cona, have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus: cuneatus, wedge-shaped; cuneo v. fasten with a wedge; (figurative) to wedge in, squeeze in, leading to English words such as cuneiform (wedge-shaped).

The word for the female genitalia dates back to the Middle English period, c.1325. Its exact origin is unknown, but is related to the Old Norse kunta, a word with cognates in several other Germanic languages. From the Proverbs of Hendyng, a mbumcript from sometime before 1325:[5]

Ȝeue þi woman's genitalse to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.

(Give your woman's genitals wisely and make (your) demands after the wedding.)

Offensiveness

Generally

The word “woman's genitals” is generally regarded in English-speaking countries as unusable in normal public discourse and has been described as “the most heavily tabooed word of all English words”,[6][7] although John Ayto, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Slang, has denied this, saying

Ethnic slurs are regarded as the taboo … fine upstanding member of society is far more taboo than **** or even woman's genitals. I think if a politician were to be heard off-camera saying ****, it would be trivial, but if he said fine upstanding member of society, that would be the end of his career.[8]

Use of the word is also dogreat timesented as the argot of some sections of society[9] and in recent years attempts have been made to mitigate its connotations by promoting positive uses.

Feminist perspectives

Some radical feminists of the 1970s sought to eliminate disparaging terms for women, including “****” and “woman's genitals”.[10] In the context of pornography, Catherine MacKinnon argued that use of the word acts to reinforce a dehumanisation of women by reducing them to mere body parts;[11] and in 1979 Andrea Dworkin described the word as reducing women to “the one essential – ‘woman's genitals: our essence … our offence’”.[11]

Despite criticisms, there is a movement within feminists that seeks to reclaim woman's genitals not only as acceptable, but as an honorific, in much the same way that fabulous person has been reclaimed by LGBT people.[12] Proponents include Inga Muscio in her book, woman's genitals: A Declaration of Independence[13] and Eve Ensler in “Reclaiming woman's genitals” from “The woman's genitals Monologues”.

The word was similarly reclaimed by Angela Carter who used it in the title story of “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories”; a female character describing female genitalia in a pornography book: “her woman's genitals a split fig below the great globes of her bumocks”.[14]

Germaine Greer, who had previously published a magazine article entitled Lady, Love Your woman's genitals,[15] discussed the origins, usage and power of the word in the BBC series Balderdash and Piffle. She suggests at the end of the piece that there is something precious about the word, in that it is now one of the few remaining words in English that still retains its power to shock.[16]

Usage: pre-20th century

woman's genitals has been in common use in its anatomical meaning since at least the 13th century. While Francis Grose’s 1785 A Clbumical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue listed the word as “C**T: a nasty name for a nasty thing”[17] it did not appear in any major dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1961, when it was included in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary with the comment “usu. considered obscene”. Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1972, which cites the word as having been in use since 1230 in what was supposedly a current London street name of “Gropewoman's genitalse Lane.” It was however also used before 1230 having been brought over by the Anglo-Saxons, originally not an obscenity but rather a factual name for the vulva or woman's genitals. “Gropewoman's genitals Lane” was originally a street of prostitution, indicating a middle ages red light district. It was normal in those times for streets to be named after the goods available for sale therein, hence the prevalence in cities having a medieval history of names such as “Silver Street”, “Fish Street”, and “Swinegate” (pork butchers). In some locations, the former name has been Bowdlerised, as in the City of York, to the more acceptable “Grape Lane”.[18]

The word appears several times in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be considered obscene at this point, since it is used openly. A notable use is from the Miller’s Tale “Pryvely he caught her by the queynte.” The Wife of Bath also uses this term, “For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave/You shall have queynte right enough at eve … What aileth you to grouche thus and groan?/Is it for ye would have my queynte alone?” In modernised versions of these pbumages the word “queynte” is usually translated simply as “woman's genitals”.[19][20] However, in Chaucer’s usage there seems to be an overlap between the words “woman's genitals” and “quaint” (possibly derived from the Latin for “known”Log in to see images!. “Quaint” was probably pronounced in Middle English in much the same way as “woman's genitals.” It is sometimes unclear whether the two words were thought of as distinct from one another. Elsewhere in Chaucer’s work the word queynte seems to be used with meaning comparable to the modern “quaint” (charming, appealing).

By Shakespeare’s day, the word seems to have become obscene. Although Shakespeare does not use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still plays with it, using wordplay to sneak it in obliquely. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet, as the castle’s residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play, Hamlet asks Ophelia, “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” Ophelia, of course, replies, “No, my lord.” Hamlet, feigning shock, says, “Do you think I meant country matters?” Then, to drive home the point that the accent is definitely on the first syllable of country, Shakespeare has Hamlet say, “That’s a fair thought, to lie between maids’ legs.”[21] Also see Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V): “There be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps.” A related scene occurs in Henry V: when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the “gros et impudique” English words “foot” and “gown,” which her English teacher has mispronounced as “coun.” It has been suggested that Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard “foot” as “foutre” (French, “****”Log in to see images!.[22] Similarly John Donne alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem The Good-Morrow, referring to sucking on “country pleasures”.

The 1675 Restoration comedy The Country Wife also features such wordplay, even in its title.

By the 17th century a softer form of the word, “cunny,” came into use. A well known use of this derivation can be found on 25 October 1668 entry of the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was discovered having an affair with Deborah Willet: he wrote that his wife “coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also….”.[23]

Cunny was probably derived from a pun on coney, meaning “rabbit”, rather as woman's genitals is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Mbuminger: “A pox upon your Christian male reproductive organatrices! They cry, like poulterers’ wives, ‘No money, no coney.’”Log in to see images![24] Largely because of this usage, the word coney to refer to rabbits changed pronunciation from short “o” (like money and honey) to long “o” (cone, as in Coney Island), and has now almost completely disappeared from most dialects of English; in the same way the word “woman's genitals” is now rarely used in America to refer to a cat.

Robert Burns used the word in his Merry Muses of Caledonia, a collection of bawdy verses which he kept to himself and were not publicly available until the mid-1960s.[25] In “Yon, Yon, Yon, Lbumie”, this couplet appears: “For ilka birss upon her woman's genitals, Was worth a ryal ransom”.[26]

Usage: modern

In modern literature

James Joyce was one of the first of the major 20th-century novelists to put the word “woman's genitals” into print. In the context of one of the central characters in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, Joyce refers to the Dead Sea and to

... the oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken woman's genitals of the world.[27]

Joyce uses the word figuratively rather than literally; but while Joyce used the word only once in Ulysses, with four other wordplays (‘woman's genitalsy’Log in to see images! on it, D. H. Lawrence used the word ten times in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, in a more direct sense.[28] Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley:

If your sister there comes ter me for a bit o’ woman's genitals an’ tenderness, she knows what she’s after.

The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution for obscenity in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books.[29]

Henry Miller’s novel Tropic of Cancer uses the word extensively, ensuring its banning in Britain between 1934 and 1961[30] and being the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, 378 U.S. 577 (1964).

Samuel Beckett was an bumociate of Joyce, and in his Malone Dies (1956), he writes: “His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her woman's genitals, that trump card of young wives.”[31]

In Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement, the word is used in a love letter mistakenly sent instead of a revised version, and although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.[32]

Usage by Meaning

Referring to women

In referring to a woman, woman's genitals is an abusive term usually considered the most offensive word in that context and even more forceful than ****.[33] In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he doesn’t like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, “she’s something of a woman's genitals, ain’t she, Doc?”[34] It can also be used to imply that the sexual act is the primary function of a woman; for example, see below in relation to Saturday Night Fever.

In 2004, University of Colorado president Elizabeth Hoffman fanned the flames of a football enjoy case when, during a deposition, she was asked if she thought “woman's genitals” was a “filthy and vile” word. She replied that it was a “swear word” but had “actually heard it used as a term of endearment”.[35] A spokesperson later clarified that Hoffman meant the word had polite meanings in its original use centuries ago. In the enjoy case, a CU football player had allegedly called female player Katie Hnida a “****ing lovely woman's genitals”.

Similarly, during the UK Oz trial for obscenity in 1971, prosecuting counsel asked writer George Melly “Would you call your 10-year-old daughter a woman's genitals?” Melly replied “No, because I don’t think she is.”[36]

Referring to men

Frederic Manning’s 1929 book The Middle Parts of Fortune, set in World War I, is a vernacular account of the lives of ordinary soldiers and describes regular use of the word by British Tommies. The word is invariably used to describe men:

And now the bastard’s wearin’ the bes’ pair slung round ‘is own bloody neck. Wouldn’t you’ve thought the woman's genitals would ‘a’ give me vingt frong for ‘em anyway?

What’s the woman's genitals want to come down ‘ere buggering us about for, ‘aven’t we done enough bloody work in th’ week?[37]

Whilst normally derogatory in English-speaking countries, the word has an informal use, even being used as a term of endearment. Like the word ****, use between youths is not uncommon, as exemplified by its use in the film Trainspotting, where it is an integral part of the common language of the principal characters.[38]

Referring to inanimate objects

woman's genitals is used extensively in Australia, Ireland and also in some parts of the UK as a replacement noun, more commonly among males and the working clbumes, similar to the use of **** or son of a **** among some Americans in extremely casual settings. For instance, “The woman's genitals of a thing won’t start,” in reference to an automobile; or “Pbum me that woman's genitals,” meaning “Pbum me that item I need”; or “Those woman's genitalss down the road,” referring to people in the vicinity. When used in this sense, the word does not necessarily imply contempt nor is it necessarily intended to be offensive.[citation needed]

Other uses

The word is sometimes used as a general expletive to show frustration, annoyance or anger, for example “I’ve had a woman's genitals of a day!”, “This is a woman's genitals to finish”.

Australians have a habit of pairing the word with another to give a more specific meaning such as woman's genitals-rash (visible disorder of the female genitalia, again normally a general insult). The phrase “sick woman's genitals” is sometimes used as a compliment by such sub-groups as Australian surfers, although the term originated within non-Australian groups who combined their use of the term “sick” with what they saw as a typically Aussie expletive.[citation needed]

A modern derivative adjective, woman's genitalsish (alternatively, woman's genitalsacious), meaning frustrating, awkward, or (when describing behavior) selfish, is increasingly used in England and has begun to appear in other regions, such as Scotland and Ireland.[citation needed]

woman's genitalsing is routinely used as an intensifying modifier, much like ****ing. It can also be used as a slang term for criticism as in “Did you see the woman's genitalsing he got for saying that?”

The word woman's genitalsy is also known, although used rarely: a line from Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette is the definition of England by a Pakistani immigrant as “eating hot bumered toast with woman's genitalsy fingers,” suggestive of hypocrisy and a hidden sordidness or immorality behind the country’s quaint façade. This term is attributed to British novelist Henry Green.[39]

woman's genitalsed can mean to be extremely under the influence of drink and/or drugs.[40]

Usage in modern popular culture

Politics

Presidential Candidate John McCain was heavily bashed by using this word to refer to his wife, Cindy McCain. He used the word during a word exchange with his wife. Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you woman's genitals.”[41] This led to John McCain being parodied as John Mcwoman's genitals in many internet site and blogs even in YouTube.

Theatre

Theatre censorship was effectively abolished in the UK in 1968; prior to that all theatrical productions had to be pre-vetted by the Lord Chamberlain; this relaxation made possible UK productions such as “Hair (The Musical)” and “Oh! Calcutta!”. But “woman's genitals” was not uttered on a British stage for some years.[42]

Television

Broadcast media, by definition, reach wide audiences and thus are regulated externally for content. To minimise not only public criticism but also regulatory sanctions, policies have been developed by media providers as to how “woman's genitals” and similar words should be treated.[43] In a survey of 2000 commissioned by the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority, “woman's genitals” was regarded as the most offensive word which could be heard, above “****” and “****”.[44] Nevertheless, there have been occasions when, particularly in a live broadcast, the word has been aired outside editorial control:

The Frost Programme, broadcast live on November 7, 1970: The first time the word was known to have been used on British television, by Felix Dennis, in an affectionate reference rather than offensively. This incident has since been reshown many times.[45]

Bernard Manning first said on television the line “They say you are what you eat. I’m a woman's genitals.”[46][47]

This Morning broadcast the word in 2000, used by the model Caprice Bourret while being interviewed live about her role in The woman's genitals Monologues[48]

However “woman's genitals” has crossed over from accidental to purposeful use:

The first scripted use of the word in the United Kingdom was in the ITV drama “No Mama No”, broadcast in 1979.[45]

In July 2007 BBC Three dedicated a full hour to the word in a detailed dogreat timesentary (“The ‘C’ Word”Log in to see images! about the origins, use and evolution of the word from the early 1900s to the present day. Presented by British comedian Will Smith, viewers were taken to a street in Oxford once called ‘Gropewoman's genitals Lane’ and presented with examples of the acceptability of “woman's genitals” as a word.[49]

In the US the broadcast use of “woman's genitals” is still rare; nevertheless, the word has slowly infiltrated into broadcasting:

The HBO TV shows Oz, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire also make frequent use of the word; and two episodes of the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm[50] are devoted to the comical repercussions of its inadvertent use.

Another HBO program Lucky Louie featured an episode, “Flowers for Kim”, revolving around Louie ruining his entire weekend by calling his wife a woman's genitals.

Similarly, Jane Fonda uttered the word on a live airing of the Today Show in 2008 when speaking about the woman's genitals Monologues.[51]

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**** is an English word that, as a verb, means “to have sexual intercourse” or “to engage in coitus with”. It can be used as a noun describing a disagreeable, offensive or unpleasant person (also ****er); its participle “****ing” is sometimes used merely as a strong emphatic. Its use is profane and considered obscene, offensive or vulgar in formal, polite and politically correct circles. On the other hand, it may be common or even expected in informal and domestic situations, or among culturally liberal social groups and types.

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) negative or unpleasant cirgreat timesstances or people in an intentionally offensive way, such as in the term ****, one of its more common usages in some parts of the English-speaking world.

The root **** is used not only for the verb (both transitive and intransitive), but may also be used to form an emphatic adverb or adjective, a noun, and interjections of various kinds. It appears in several compounds, such as:

**** off, as a command, to leave forthwith, go away; as a verb, to fool around, be idle.

**** over, to take advantage of, exploit.

**** up, to bungle, or ruin or spoil especially through stupidity, ignorance or carelessness; to blunder, or act foolishly or stupidly.

A **** can designate a sexual partner. In less explicit usages (but still regarded as vulgar), **** can mean to mess around, or to deal with unfairly or harshly. In a phrase such as “don’t give a ****”, the word is the equivalent of “damn”, in the sense of something having little value. In “what the ****”, it serves as a meaningless intensive.

Contents [hide]

1 Etymology

1.1 Flen flyys and freris

1.2 John le ****er

1.3 Anglo-Saxon

1.4 Older etymology

1.4.1 Via Germanic

1.5 Possible Latin origins

1.6 Possible Celtic origins

1.7 Possible Greek origins

1.8 False etymologies

2 Usage history

2.1 Early usage

2.2 Rise of modern usage

2.3 Use in politics

2.4 Use in marketing

2.5 Freedom of expression

2.6 Popular usage

2.7 Band names

2.8 Holy ****

2.9 Occurrence in machine mistranslations

3 Common alternatives

4 Other languages

4.1 Afrikaans

4.2 Arabic

4.3 Catalan

4.4 Chinese languages

4.5 Dutch

4.6 French

4.7 German

4.8 Interlingua

4.9 Japanese

4.10 Korean

4.11 Norwegian

4.12 Swedish

4.13 Welsh

5 See also

6 References

7 Further references

8 External links

Etymology

Sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary contend that the true etymology of **** is still uncertain but appears to point to an Anglo-Saxon origin.

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”Log in to see images!. The line that contains **** reads “Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk”. Removing the substitution cipher[1] 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 **** wives of Ely” (fvccant is a fake Latin form).[2] The phrase was coded likely because it accused some Church personnel of misbehaving; it is uncertain to what extent the word **** was considered acceptable at the time.

John le ****er

A man’s name “John le ****er” 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 ****er” 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 mbumcript 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.[3]

Anglo-Saxon

An Anglo-Saxon charter [1] [2] granted by Offa, king of Mercia, dated A.D.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 ****er or ****ers” or “the enclosed pasture (hamm) of the ****er or ****ers”, 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 **** has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German ficken (to copulate); Dutch fokken (to breed cattle), from Middle Dutch (push, thrust, copulate); dialectal Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectal Swedish ****a (to strike, copulate) and fock (male reproductive organ).

This points to a possible etymology where Common Germanic fuk–, by reverse 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” (cf. the Latin-derived English words pugnacious = “combative”, and pugilist = “fighter, boxer”Log in to see images!. 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 *h3yebh– or *h3eybh–, which is attested in Sanskrit yabhati, Russian ебать (yebat’Log in to see images!, Polish jebać, and Serbian јебати (jebati), among others: compare the Greek verb οιφω (oiphō) = “I have sexual intercourse with”, and the Greek noun ζεφυρος (zephuros) (which references a Greek belief that the west wind Zephyrus caused pregnancy).

Possible Latin origins

Other possible connections are to Latin fūtuere (almost exactly the same meaning as the English verb “to ****”Log in to see images!, or as causative “create” [see Young, 1964]. A possible intermediate might be a Latin 4th-declension verbal noun *fūtus, with possible meanings including “act of (pro)creating”.

(The Spanish verb follar has a different origin: according to Spanish etymologists, it (attested in the 19th century) derives via fuelle (“bellows”Log in to see images! from Latin folle(m) < Indo-European *bhel–; the old Spanish verb folgar (attested in the 15th century) derived from Latin follicare, also ultimately from follem/follis.)

A derivation from Latin facere = “to do”, “to make” has been suggested.

Possible Celtic origins

A Celtic origin has been suggested: compare Irish bot and Manx bwoid (male reproductive organ), Common Celtic *bactuere (to pierce), from the root buc– (a point).[citation needed]

Possible Greek origins

Greek phyō (φυω) has various meanings, including (of a man) “to beget”, or (of a woman), “to give birth to”.[4] Its perfect tense pephyka (πεφυκα) has been likened to “****” and its equivalents in other Germanic languages.

False etymologies

One reason that the word **** 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 **** 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 **** came from Irish law. If a couple were caught committing adultery, they would be punished “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge In the Nude”, with “****IN” 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”

“Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”, referring to the crime of enjoy.

There are unproved stories that **** arose as an abbreviation of one of the versions containing “unlawful”:

In armed forces log books, when reporting courts martial of men accused of homosexual intercourse.[citation needed]

On tombstones around English cemeteries, referring to being put to death for crimes against the state and the church.[citation needed] No such tombstone has been provably found.

Usage history

Main article: History of the word ‘****’

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, wind****er was an acceptable name for the bird now known as the kestrel[citation needed].

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 ****. 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[5], **** 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 woman's genitals) was in 1972. There is anecdotal evidence of its use during the American Civil War. (citation needed)

In 1928, D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover gained notoriety for its frequent use of the words ****, ****ed, and ****ing.

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, **** 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 **** 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 ****.” 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 **** (and woman's genitals 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 **** 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 bumociation.[6] 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 **** 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 ****in’ head is coming right off.” Also, former Beatle John Lennon’s 1971 release “Working Clbum 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. [3] [4]

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’Brien, on which the film is based.[7]

Comedian George Carlin once commented that the word **** 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 **** in his comedy routine, such as in an old movie western: “Okay, sheriff, we’re gonna **** you, now. But we’re gonna **** you slow…” Or, perhaps in reference to a murderer:”Mad ****er on the Loose,” or even the murderer himself:”Stop me before I **** again!” More popularly published is his famous “Filthy Words” routine, better known as “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.”

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****, in its literal meaning, is usually considered a vulgar word (swear word) in Modern English. As a noun it refers to fecal matter (excrement) and as a verb it means to defecate or defecate in; in the plural (“the ****s”Log in to see images! it means diarrhoea. As a slang term, it can mean nonsense, foolishness or something of little value; trivial and usually boastful or inaccurate talk, or a contemptible person. To ****, in slang, is to talk nonsense to, or to attempt to deceive.

Contents [hide]

1 Etymology

2 Usage

2.1 The verb “to ****”

2.2 Other parts of speech

2.3 Usage in acronyms

3 Usage in English media

3.1 Television

3.1.1 United Kingdom

3.1.2 United States

3.2 Japan

4 See also

5 References

6 External links

Etymology

Scholars trace the word back to Old Norse origin (skīta, to defecate), and it is virtually certain that it was used in some form by preliterate Germanic tribes at the time of the Roman Empire. It was originally adopted into Old English as the nouns scite (dung, attested only in place names) and scitte (diarrhoea), and the verb scītan (to defecate, attested only in bescītan, to cover with excrement); eventually it morphed into Middle English schītte (excrement), schyt (diarrhoea) and ****en (to defecate). The word may be further traced to Proto-Germanic *skit-, and ultimately to Proto-Indo-European *skheid-. Ancient Greek language had ‘skor’ (root ‘skat-’ from which modern Greek ‘skatá’Log in to see images!. The words ‘skítur’ (noun) and ‘skíta’ (verb), still exist in the Icelandic language today, and in other Scandinavian languages variations of ‘skit’ are also often used.

Usage

The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia.

Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia’s guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(June 2008)

The word **** (or sometimes ****e in Scotland, Ireland, Northern England and Wales) is used by English speakers, but it is usually avoided in formal speech.

In the word’s literal sense, it has a rather small range of common usages. An unspecified or collective occurrence of feces is generally **** or some ****; a single deposit of feces is sometimes a **** or a piece of ****, and to defecate is to ****, or to take a ****. While it is common to speak of **** as existing in a pile, a load, a hunk and other quantities and configurations, such expressions flourish most strongly in the figurative. For practical purposes, when actual defecation and excreta are spoken of in English, it is either through creative euphemism or with a vague and fairly rigid literalism. Substitutes for the word **** in English include sugar and shoot.

**** carries an encompbuming variety of figurative meanings. Of these, perhaps the most common are generic expressions of displeasure (as in, ****!), fear (Oh, ****!), or surprise (Holy ****!).

Interestingly, in slang, prefixing the article the to **** gives it a completely opposite definition, meaning the best, as in “Altered Beast is the ****,” or “Metallica is the ****.”

**** denotes trouble, as in I was in a lot of ****; low quality, as in That disk drive is **** (see “piece of ****” below); unpleasantness, as in Those pants look like ****, or This brown stuff tastes a bit like ****; or falsehood or insincerity, as in Don’t give me that **** or You’re full of ****, or surprised anger, as in Jim is totally going to flip his **** when he sees that we wrecked his marriage. Sometimes using **** to denote anger will be heard in the phrase **** a brick. The word bull**** also denotes false or insincere discourse. (Horse**** is roughly equivalent, while chicken**** means cowardly, bat**** indicates a person is crazy, and going ape**** indicates a person is entering a state of high excitement or unbridled rage.). Are you ****ting me!? is a question sometimes given in response to an incredible bumertion. An answer that rebumerts the veracity of the claim is, I **** you not.

The expression no ****? (a contraction of no bull****?) is used in response to a statement that is extraordinary or hard to believe. Alternatively the maker of the hard-to-believe statement may add “no ****” to reinforce the sincerity or truthfulness of their statement, particularly in response to someone expressing disbelief at their statement. “No ****” is also used sarcastically in response to a statement of the obvious, as in No ****, Sherlock.

**** can also be used to establish superiority over another being. The most common phrase is “Eat ****!” symbolizing the hatred toward the recipient. Some other personal word may be added such as “Eat my ****” implying truly personal connotations. As an aside, the above is actually a contraction of the phrase “Eat **** and die!”. It is often said without commas as a curse; they with the other party to perform exactly those actions in that order. However, the term was originally “Eat, ****, and Die” naming the three most basic things humans have to do, and it is common among soldiers.

**** can also be used as a comparative noun; for instance, This show is funny **** or This test is hard ****, or That was stupid ****. These three usages (with funny, hard, and stupid or another synonym of stupid) are heard most commonly in the United States. Note that **** is both a positive and negative thing in these examples, **** being apparently very funny (a positive thing) and in the second and third examples very hard (as in, difficult- a negative thing to be) or very stupid. Note also that in a phrase like this, the speaker doesn’t include the term as before the comparison; saying that something is as funny as **** would sound like a criticism to anyone reading the term (**** not being a very funny thing to be), although if spoken could be understood along with the spirit it’s said in. Using the as changes these phrases from a simple colloquialism to a literal statement.

**** can comfortably stand in for the terms bad and anything in many instances (Dinner was good, but the movie was ****. You’re all mad at me, but I didn’t do ****!). Many usages are idiomatic. The phrase, I don’t give a **** denotes indifference. I’m **** out of luck usually refers to someone who is at the end of their wits or who has no remaining viable options. That little **** shot me in the bum, suggests a mischievous or contemptuous person. However, in such a nominative construction, crap (as in, That little crap shot me in the bum) is not accepted in vernacular English. Of further note is that little **** is common as a term of opprobrium, while big **** is unfamiliar, and that direct scatological appellations are rarely applied to females, for whom gender-specific terms such as **** or woman's genitals more readily accrue. (However, in Britain and Australia, the term woman's genitals is used to refer to men very much more frequently than to women)

The term piece of **** is generally used to clbumify a product or service as being sufficiently below the writer’s understanding of generally accepted quality standards to be of negligible and perhaps even negative value.The term piece of **** has greater precision than **** or ****ty in that piece of **** identifies the low quality of a specific component or output of a process without applying a derogatory slant to the entire process. For example, if one said “The inner city youth orchestra has been a remarkably successful initiative in that it has kept young people off the streets after school and exposed them to culture and discipline, thereby improving their self esteem and future prospects. The fact that the orchestra’s recent rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony in B minor was pretty much a piece of **** should not in any way detract from this.” The substitution of **** or ****ty for pretty much a piece of **** would imply irony and would therefore undermine the strength of the statement.

In Get your **** together! the word **** may refer to some set of personal belongings or tools, or to one’s wits, composure, or attention to the task at hand. He doesn’t have his **** together suggests he is failing rather broadly, with the onus laid to multiple personal shortcomings, rather than bad luck or outside forces. **** can even be a plain, neuter pronoun for basically anything in vulgar speech. For instance, in There is some serious **** going down **** can easily be replaced by stuff with no real loss of meaning. The same applies to Get your **** together! and the like.

To “shoot the ****” is to have a friendly but pointless conversation, as in “Come by my place some time and we’ll shoot the ****.”

“When the **** hits the fan” is usually used to refer to a specific time of confrontation or trouble, which requires decisive action. This is often used in reference to combat situations and the action scenes in movies, but can also be used for everyday instances that one might be apprehensive about. “I don’t want to be here when the **** hits the fan!” indicates that the speaker is dreading this moment (which can be anything from an enemy attack to confronting an angry parent or friend). “He’s the one to turn to when the **** hits the fan.” is an indication that the person being talked about is dependable and will not run from trouble or abandon their allies in tough situations. The concept of this phrase is simple enough, as the actual substance striking the rotating blades of a fan would cause a messy and unpleasant situation (much like being in the presence of a manure spreader). Whether or not this has actually happened, or if the concept is simply feasible enough for most people to imagine the result without needing it to be demonstrated, is unknown. Another example might be the saying “**** rolls down hill” particularly illustrating, the consequences of putting your superiors in a bad position at work. There are a number of anecdotes and jokes about such situations, as the imagery of these situations is considered to be funny. This is generally tied-in with the concept that disgusting and messy substances spilled onto someone else are humorous.

While the most common uses of **** are figurative, the unpleasant substance to which the term literally refers is seldom entirely absent, and thus most uses of **** have some degree of pejoration. But this is far from a universal rule: In some styles of discourse, **** can replace nearly any noun. In the sentence “I bought a bunch of **** at the store today”, **** is merely a casual intensification of stuff. Similarly, Check that **** out! connotes surprise at some sort of stuff or activity that could very well be pleasant. Give me a bite of that **** implies a deliciousness notably absent from the literal substance. It’s common for someone to refer to an unpleasant thing as hard **** (You got a speeding ticket? Man, that’s some hard ****), but the phrase tough **** is used as an unsympathetic way of saying too bad to whomever is having problems (You got arrested? Tough ****, man!) or as a way of expressing to someone that they need to stop complaining about something and just deal with it (Billy: I got arrested because of you! Tommy: Tough ****, dude, you knew you might get arrested when you chose to come with me.) Note that in this case, as in many cases with the term, tough **** is often said as a way of pointing out someone’s fault in his/her own current problem. To drug users, **** almost always refers to a drug being discussed. This was a secret code in the early 60s, and though most people now understand phrases like “I bought some good **** today; I can’t wait to try it”, the phrase is still common.

Perhaps the only constant connotation that **** reliably carries is that its referent holds some degree of emotional intensity for the speaker. Whether offense is taken at hearing the word varies greatly according to listener and situation, and is related to age and social clbum: elderly speakers and those of (or aspiring to) higher socioeconomic strata tend to use it more privately and selectively than younger and more blue-collar speakers. Moreover, in some colloquial speech, calling something or someone the **** is laudatory. For instance, Dave’s new car is the **** suggests that Dave’s new car is very good. This meaning is also essentially a substitution for the term stuff, but is also similar to the colloquial usage of bad to mean dangerous and deserving of respect. Crap is unknown in such locutions.

In polite company, sometimes the backronym Sugar Honey in Tea or Sugar Honey Iced Tea is used.

**** (like ****) is often used to add emphasis more than to add meaning: ****! I was so ****-scared of that ****head that I ****-talked him into dropping out of the karate match. The term to ****-talk connotes bragging or exaggeration (whereas to talk **** primarily means to gossip [about someone in a damaging way] or to talk in a boastful way about things which are erroneous in nature), but in such constructions as the above, the word **** often functions as an interjection. Euphemisms for **** in this usage include shoot, shucks, and in Hiberno-English sugar and its Irish equivalent siúcra (pronounced [ʃuːkrə].

**** itself can be a quasi-euphemism, many intoxicating or narcotic drugs (notably hashish and heroin) being referred to as ****. To be ****faced is to be extremely drunk.

“****” can also be combined with other words to denote the type of feces one has. For instance, “Snake ****” describes feces that are long and slender in shape, thus reminiscent of a snake’s appearance. “Shapeepee” or “**** pee pee” is another word for diarrhea, or can be used to describe feces that are almost entirely of liquid composition.

The verb “to ****”

The preterite and past participle of **** are attested as shat, ****, or ****ted, depending on dialect and, sometimes, the rhythm of the sentence. In the prologue of the Canterbury Tales, ****ten is used as the past participle; however this form is very rare in modern English. In American English **** as a past participle is always correct, while shat is generally acceptable and ****ted is uncommon.

Other parts of speech

Non-native English speakers should take note that **** and **** often serve different uses as expletives, such that (for instance) the present active participle, ****ting, is rarely used emphatically. Ex.: In the sentence, I was so ****-scared of that ****head that I ****-talked him into dropping out of the ****ting karate match, the phrase, ****ting karate match, would be incomprehensible to native speakers except in suggesting a singularly unsanitary form of karate. (In the UK, phrases such as ****ting hell as an emphatic are not unknown.) A correct and clear vulgarism would be the ****ing karate match. Similarly, **** is never used as an infix: While in-****ing-credible is comprehensible English, in-****ting-credible is not. **** you! is likewise a puzzling and ineffective expression of defiance. It is not uncommon, however, to encounter an adjective or noun constructed partially of the word ****, such as ****tastic, ****tacular or ****uation.

Sometimes in family movies, some actors let the word **** slip, but then stretch it into a harmless word. An example occurs in Spy Kids, where Carmen is heard to say “Oh, ****…take mushrooms.” The euphemism was also written into Spy Kids 2, where Carmen says, “You are full of shiitake mushrooms.”

“For ****s and giggles” describes things done on a whim or for no particular reason. Example: I ran around the campus for ****s and giggles.

In parts of Canada, a “****-disturber” is a person who deliberately causes trouble or who is aggravating.

“**** stirrer” is used to refer the same thing in England, Ireland, and in Australia.

A “****load” or a “****-ton” is a very large amount of something, e.g. “I have a ****load of laundry to do today” or “I have hardly any wine, but I have **** tons of beer in the house”.

“****-kickers” are construction boots, large boots in general, or cowboy boots, or wearers of the same (particularly if the person wearing the cowboy boots does not actually herd cattle).

A “****-kicking job” is a low-paid blue-collar work.

“**** in a bag and punch it” is a common colloquial phrase to indicate frustratation with a situation or question, e.g., “John has been arrested again”, “Oh, **** in a bag and punch it.”

In the US military, a dish comprising chipped beef (or hamburger meat) in gravy on toast is often referred to as “**** on a shingle”.

The term “dip****” is used to describe someone who is considered to be stupid, while “dip****tery” can be used to describe general stupidity, e.g., “Can you believe that new policy? That is just plain dip****tery.”

“**** off a shovel” is used in the United Kingdom as a euphemism for speed. It is a visual metaphor projecting the image of moist faeces slipping off the smooth metal surface of the gardening instrument with little or no resistance.

“Hot ****”, in reference to persons, is another way of saying “hotshot” or “hot stuff” but it is usually applied sarcastically to a conceited person.

Some users of English in the Far East use the expression nose **** to describe the fragments of dried nasal mucus which occasionally exit (deliberately or accidentally) from the nostrils. Similarly, expressions eye **** and less commonly ear **** describe discharge of the eye, dried or still moist, and ear wax, respectively. These are all direct calques of the Chinese expressions for these bodily outputs.

**** • **** • **** • woman's genitals • male reproductive organsucker • **** • mammary glands

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World War Two

War Ensign of Nazi Germany (1938-1945)The Nazi rulers of Germany began World War II by invading Poland in September 1939 and conquered most of Western Europe except for the United Kingdom in the summer of 1940. On June 22, 1941, they invaded the Soviet Union and came close to capturing Moscow in December 1941. However, its fortunes in the war declined by late 1942 and early 1943 when the Allies defeated Nazi forces at Stalingrad and at both El-Alamein and Tunisia in North Africa.

The Nazi regime in Germany ended with World War II in 1945, when the party was declared a criminal organisation by the victorious Allied Powers. Since 1945, Nazism has been outlawed as a political ideology in Germany, as are forms of iconography and propaganda from the Nazi era. Nevertheless, neo-Nazis continue to operate in Germany and several other countries. Following World War II and the Holocaust, the term Nazi and symbols bumociated with Nazism (such as the Swastika) acquired extremely negative connotations in Europe and North America.

[edit] Ideology

Adolf HitlerNazism has come to stand for a belief in the superiority of an Aryan race, an abstraction of the Germanic peoples. During Hitler’s time, the Nazis advocated a strong, centralized government under the Führer and claimed to defend Germany and the German people (including those of German ethnicity abroad) against Communism and so-called Jewish subversion. Ultimately, the Nazis sought to create a largely homogeneous and autarkic ethnic state, absorbing the ideas of Pan-Germanism.

Historians often disagree on the principal interests of the Nazi Party and whether Nazism can be considered a coherent ideology. The original National Socialists claimed that there would be no program that would bind them, and that they wanted to reject any established world view. Still, as Hitler played a major role in the development of the Nazi Party from its early stages and rose to become the movement’s indisputable iconographic figurehead, much of what is thought to be “Nazism” is in line with Hitler’s own political beliefs — the ideology and the man remain largely interchangeable in the public eye. Some dispute whether Hitler’s views relate directly to those surrounding the movement; the problem is exacerbated by the inability of various self-proclaimed Nazis and Nazi groups to decide on a universal ideology. But if Nazism is the world view promulgated in Mein Kampf, that world view is consistent and coherent, being characterized essentially by a conception of history as a race struggle; the Führerprinzip; anti-Semitism; and the need to acquire Lebensraum (living space) at the expense of the Soviet Union [24]. The core concept of Nazism is that the German Volk is under attack from a judeo-bolshevist conspiracy[24], and must become united, disciplined and self sacrificing (must submit to Nazi leadership) in order to win.

Hitler’s political beliefs were formulated in Mein Kampf. His views were composed of three main axes: a conception of history as a race struggle influenced by social darwinism; antisemitism and the idea that Germany needed to acquire land from Russia. His antisemitism, coupled with his anti-Communism, gave the grounds of his conspiracy theory of “judeo-bolshevism”.[24] Hitler first began to develop his views through observations he made while living in Vienna from 1907 to 1913. He concluded that a racial, religious, and cultural hierarchy existed, and he placed “Aryans” at the top as the ultimate superior race, while Jews and “Gypsies” were people at the bottom. He vaguely examined and questioned the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where as a citizen by birth, Hitler lived during the Empire’s last throes. He believed that its ethnic and linguistic diversity had weakened the Empire and helped to create dissent. Further, he saw democracy as a destabilizing force because it placed power in the hands of ethnic minorities who, he claimed, “weakened and destabilized” the Empire by dividing it against itself. Hitler’s political beliefs were then affected by World War I and the 1917 October Revolution, and saw some modifications between 1920 and 1923. He formulated them definitively in Mein Kampf.[25]

[edit] Fascism

Further information: Fascism and ideology

In both popular thought and academic scholarship, Nazism is generally considered a form of fascism — a term whose definition is itself contentious. The debate focuses mainly on comparisons of fascist movements in general with the Italian prototype, including the fascists in Germany. The idea mentioned above to reject all former ideas and ideologies like democracy, liberalism, and especially marxism (as in Ernst Nolte[26]) make it difficult to track down a perfect definition of these two terms; however, Italian Fascists tended to believe that all elements in society should be unified through corporatism to form an “Organic State”; this meant that these Fascists often had no strong opinion on the question of race, since it was only the state and nation that mattered.

German Nazism, on the other hand, emphasized the Aryan race or “Volk” principle to the point where the state seemed simply a means through which the Aryan race could realize its “true destiny”. Since a debate among historians (especially Zeev Sternhell) to see each movement, or at least the German one, as unique, the issue has been for the most part settled, showing that there is a stronger family resemblance between the Italian and the German fascist movement than there is between democracies in Europe or the communist states of the Cold War;[27] additionally, the crimes of the fascist movement can be compared, not only in numbers of casualties, but also in common developments: the March on Rome of Mussolini to Hitler’s response shortly after to attempt a coup d’etat himself in Munich.

Also, Aryanism was not an attractive idea for Italians who were seen as a non-Nordic population, but still there was a strong racism and also genocide in concentration camps long before either was in place in Germany.[28] The philosophy that had seemed to be separating both fascisms was shown to be a result of happening in two different countries: since the king of Italy had not died, unlike the Reichspräsident, the leader in Italy (Duce) was not able to gain the absolute power the leader in Germany (Führer) did, leading to Mussolini’s fall. The academic challenge to separate all fascist movements has since the 1980s and early 1990s been ground for a new attempt to see even more similarities.

According to most scholars of fascism, especially once in power, has historically attracted support from the political right, especially the “far right” or “extreme right.”[29]

[edit] Nationalism

Hitler founded the Nazi state upon a racially defined “German people” and principally rejected the idea of being bound by the limits of nationalism.[30] That was only a means for attempting unlimited supremacy. In that sense, its hyper-nationalism was tolerated to reach a world-dominating Germanic-Aryan Volksgemeinschaft. This idea is a central concept of Mein Kampf, symbolized by the motto Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (one people, one empire, one leader). The Nazi relationship between the Volk and the state was called the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), a late nineteenth or early twentieth century neologism that defined a communal duty of citizens in service to the Reich (as opposed to a simple society). The term “National Socialism” derives from this citizen-nation relationship, whereby the term socialism is invoked and is meant to be realized through the common duty of the individuals to the German people; all actions are to be in service of the Reich. The Nazis stated that their goal was to bring forth a nation-state as the locus and embodiment of the people’s collective will, bound by the Volksgemeinschaft, as both an ideal and an operating instrument. In comparison, traditional socialist ideologies oppose the idea of nations.

[edit] Militarism

Nazi rationale invested heavily in the militarist belief that great nations grow from military power and maintained order, which in turn grow “naturally” from “rational, civilized cultures”. The Nazi Party appealed to German nationalists and national pride, capitalizing on irredentist and revanchist sentiments as well as aversions to various aspects of modernist thinking (although at the same time embracing other modernist ideas, such as admiration for engine power). Many ethnic Germans felt deeply committed to the goal of creating the Greater Germany (the old dream to include German-speaking Austria), which some believe required the use of military force to achieve.

[edit] Racism and discrimination

Further information: Nazism and race & Racial policy of Nazi Germany

The Nazi racial philosophy was influenced by the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Madison Grant, and was elaborated by Alfred Rosenberg in the Myth of the Twentieth Century.

Hitler also claimed that a nation was the highest creation of a “race”, and “great nations” (literally large nations) were the creation of homogeneous populations of “great races” working together. These nations developed cultures that naturally grew from “races” with “natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits”. The “weakest nations”, Hitler said, were those of “impure” or “mongrel races”, because they had divided, quarreling, and therefore weak cultures. Worst of all were seen to be the parasitic “Untermensch” (“subhumans”), mainly Jews, but also Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, the disabled and so-called anti-socials, all of whom were considered “lebensunwertes Leben” (“life-unworthy life”) owing to their perceived deficiency and inferiority, as well as their wandering, nationless invasions (“the International Jew”). The persecution of homosexuals as part of the Holocaust (with the pink triangle) has seen increasing scholarly attention since the 1990s, even though many homosexuals served in the Sturmabteilungen.

According to Nazism, it is an obvious mistake to permit or encourage plurality within a nation. Fundamental to the Nazi goal was the unification of all German-speaking peoples, “unjustly” divided into different Nation States. The Nazis tried to recruit Dutch and Scandinavian men into the SS, considering them of superior “Germanic” stock, with only limited success.

Hitler claimed that nations that could not defend their territory did not deserve it. He thought “slave races”, like the Slavic peoples, to be less worthy to exist than “leader races”. In particular, if a master race should require room to live (“Lebensraum”), he thought such a race should have the right to displace the inferior indigenous races.[citation needed]

“Races without homelands”, Hitler proclaimed, were “parasitic races”, and the richer the members of a parasitic race were, the more virulent the parasitism was said to be. A master race could therefore, according to the Nazi doctrine, easily strengthen itself by eliminating parasitic races from its homeland. This idea was the given rationalization for the Nazis’ later oppression and elimination of Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, Poles, the mentally and physically handicapped, homosexuals and others not belonging to these groups or categories that were part of the Holocaust. The Waffen-SS and other German soldiers (including parts of the Wehrmacht), as well as civilian paramilitary groups in occupied territories, were responsible for the deaths of an estimated eleven million men, women, and children in concentration camps, prisoner-of-war camps, labor camps, and death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.

[edit] Eugenics

Main article: Nazi eugenics

The belief in the need to purify the German race led them to eugenics; this effort culminated in the involuntary euthanasia of disabled people and the compulsory sterilization of people with mental deficiencies or illnesses perceived as hereditary. Adolf Hitler considered Sparta to be the first “Völkisch State”, and praised its early eugenics treatment of deformed children.[31][32]

[edit] Antisemitism

According to Nazi propaganda, the Jews thrived on fomenting division amongst Germans and amongst states. Nazi antisemitism was primarily racial: “The Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race;” however, the Jews were also described as plutocrats exploiting the worker: “As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation’s goods.”[33] In addition, the Nazis articulated opposition to finance capitalism with an emphasis on antisemitic claims that this was manipulated by a conspiracy of Jewish bankers.[34]

[edit] Homosexuality

Main article: History of homosexual people in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

An estimated 100,000 homosexuals were arrested after Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s. Of those, 50,000 were suspected to be incarcerated in concentration camps, making for 5,000 to 15,000 deaths. According to Harry Oosterhuis, the Nazis’ original view toward homosexuality was at least ambiguous if not openly tolerant or even approving, with homosexuality common in the Sturmabteilung(SA) which was critical to Hitler as the paramilitary arm of the NSDAP.[35] Thus, the eventual arrests of homosexuals should not be viewed in the context of “race hygiene” or eugenics. Völkisch-nationalist youth movements attracted homosexuals because of the preaching of Männerbund (male bonding); in practice, Oosterhuis says, this meant that the persecution of homosexuals was more politically motivated or opportunistic than anything else.[36] For example, the homosexuality of Ernst Röhm and other leaders of the Sturmabteilung was well known for years and became the basis for satire and jokes, including in the Army, which was highly suspicious and resentful of the SA’s power and size.[37] Röhm was killed chiefly because he was perceived as a political threat, not for his homosexuality. Indeed, it was only after the murder of Roehm that the Nazis publicly expressed concern about the depraved morals of Roehm and the other S.A. leaders who were shot. …Hitler in addressing the surviving storm troop leaders in Munich at noon on June 30[when?], just after the first executions, declared that for their corrupt morals alone these men deserved to die.[38]

Eventually, Nazism declared itself incompatible with homosexuality, because gays did not reproduce and perpetuate the master race. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS, created the “Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.” Homosexuality was declared contrary to “wholesome popular sentiment,”[39] and gay men were regarded as “defilers of German blood.” Homosexuals were persecuted for their sexuality. When they were prisoners in a concentration camp, they were forced to wear a pink triangle.[40]

Posted On: 07/08/2008 12:50PM

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