**** 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.”