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Fuck () is a profanity in the English language that often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to around 1475. In modern usage, the term fuck and its derivatives (such as fucker and fucking) are used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an Expletive infix, an interjection or an adverb. There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as compounds that incorporate it, such as motherfucker and .
Nevertheless, the word has increasingly become less of a pejorative and more publicly acceptable, an example of the "dysphemism treadmill" or Semantic change known as melioration, wherein former become inoffensive and commonplace. Because of its increasing usage in the public forum, in 2005 the word was included for the first time as one of three vulgarities in The Canadian Press's Canadian Press Caps and Spelling guide. Journalists were advised to refrain from censoring the word but use it sparingly and only when its inclusion was essential to the story. According to linguist Pamela Hobbs, "notwithstanding its increasing public use, enduring cultural models that inform our beliefs about the nature of sexuality and sexual acts preserve its status as a vile utterance that continues to inspire moral outrage." Hobbs considers users rather than usage of the word and subdivides users into "non-users", for whom "the word belongs to a set of taboo words, the very utterance of which constitutes an affront, and any use of the word, regardless of its form (verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) or meaning (literal or metaphorical) evokes the core sexual meanings and associated sexual imagery that motivate the taboo"; and "users", for whom "metaphorical uses of the word fuck no more evoke images of sexual intercourse than does a ten-year-old's 'My mom'll kill me if she finds out' evokes images of murder" so that the "criteria of taboo are missing."
The word has probable in other Germanic languages, such as German ficken ('to fuck'); Dutch language fokken ('to breed', 'to beget'); Afrikaans fok ('to fuck'); Icelandic fokka ('to mess around', 'to rush'); dialectal Norwegian fukka ('to copulate'); and dialectal Swedish language focka ('to strike', 'to copulate') and fock ('penis'). This points to a possible etymology where Common Germanic *fuk(k)ōn-from the verbal root *fug- ('to blow') comes from an Indo-European root *peuk-, or *peuĝ- ('to strike'), cognate with non-Germanic words such as Latin pugno ('I fight') or pugnus ('fist'). By application of Grimm's law, this hypothetical root also has the Pre-Germanic form * pug-néh2- ('to blow'), which is the etymon of, amongst others, Dutch fok(zeil) ('foresail'). There is a theory that fuck is most likely derived from German or Dutch roots, and is probably not derived from an Old English root.
Another legendary etymology, first made popular by the American radio show Car Talk, says that the phrase fuck you derives from pluck yew in connection with a misconception regarding the origins of the V sign. This misconception states that English archers believed that those who were captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they could no longer operate their English longbow, and that the V sign was used by uncaptured and victorious archers in a display of defiance against the French. The addition of the phrase fuck you to the misconception came when it was claimed that the English yelled that they could still pluck yew, (Taxus baccata wood being the preferred material for longbows at the time), a phrase that evolved into the modern fuck you. In any event, the word fuck has been in use far too long for some of these supposed origins to be possible. Since no such acronym was ever recorded before the 1960s according to the lexicographer work The F-Word, such claims create at best a so-called "backronym".
Otherwise, the usually accepted first known occurrence of the word is found in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed in the 15th century. 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'). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Deciphering the phrase gxddbou xxkxzt pg ifmk, here by replacing each letter by the previous letter in alphabetical order, as the English alphabet was then, yields the macaronic non sunt in coeli, quia fuccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, 'They are not in heaven, because they fuck the women of Ely'. The phrase was probably encoded because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy; it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. The stem of fuccant is an Dog Latin. In the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for 'woman'.
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).
The oldest known occurrence of the word in adjectival form (which implies use of the verb) in English comes from the margins of a 1528 manuscript copy of Cicero's De Officiis. A monk had scrawled in the margin notes, "fuckin Abbot". Whether the monk meant the word literally, to accuse this abbot of "questionable monastic morals", or whether he used it "as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay" is unclear.
John Florio's 1598 Italian–English dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes, included the term, along with several now-archaic, but then-vulgar synonyms, in this definition:
Of these, "occupy" and "jape" still survive as verbs, though with less profane meanings, while "sard" was a descendant of the Anglo-Saxons verb seordan (or seorðan, Old Norse serða), to copulate; and "swive" had derived from earlier swīfan, to revolve i.e. to swivel (compare modern-day "screw"). As late as the 18th century, the verb occupy was seldom used in print because it carried sexual overtones.A 1790 poem by St. George Tucker has a father upset with his bookish son say "I'd not give a for all you've read". Originally printed as "I'd not give ------ for all you've read", scholars agree that the words a fuck were removed, making the poem the first recorded instance of the now-common phrase I don't give a fuck.
Farmer and Henley's 1893 dictionary of slang notes both the adverbial and adjectival forms of fuck as similar to but "more violent" than bloody and indicating extreme insult, respectively.
According to an article in the journal Science, research shows that when humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth, leading to an overbite in adults. This overbite is said to make it easier to produce "f" and "v" sounds, and humorously, cleared the way for words like "Fuck".
The word fuck is a component of many acronyms, some of which—like SNAFU (Situation Normal: All Fucked Up) and FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition)—date as far back as World War II. MILF (Mother I'd Like to Fuck) and variations of the first letter are widely seen in pornographic contexts. Many more recent coinages, such as the shorthand ? for , STFU for 'shut the fuck up', or FML for 'fuck my life', have been widely extant on the Internet, and may count as examples of . Many acronyms will also have an F or MF added to increase emphasis; for example, OMG () becomes OMFG ('oh my fucking God'). Abbreviations involving fuck can be considered less offensive than fuck itself. Although the word is proclaimed vulgar, several comedians rely on fuck for comedic routines. George Carlin created several literary works based upon the word, including his routine "seven dirty words"—words that were on US television.
"Fuck all" is a widely recognised, mainly in the United Kingdom and Australia, expression meaning "none", "nothing", or "very little".
Actress Miriam Margolyes has claimed that she was the first to unintentionally say the word on the quiz show University Challenge in 1963; representing Newnham College, Cambridge. She claims to have uttered the word in frustration over an incorrect answer. The word was "bleeped out" for transmission. University Challenge The Story So Far – Documentary, Granada for BBC, aired by BBC 27 December 27, 2008, 14:15 However, the first documented deliberate use of the word fuck on live British television has been attributed to theatre critic Kenneth Tynan in 1965, though it has been claimed Irish playwright Brendan Behan used the word on Panorama in 1956 or the man who painted the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the River Lagan in Belfast, who in 1959 told Ulster TV's teatime magazine programme Roundabout that his job was "fucking boring". Television's magic moments The Guardian, August 16, 2013. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
The Bill Grundy incident was a controversy that ensued in 1976 when Today host Bill Grundy interviewed the Sex Pistols, after guitarist Steve Jones called Grundy a "dirty fucker" and a "fucking rotter".
The word began to break into cinema when it was uttered once in the film Vapor (1963) and in two Andy Warhol films – Poor Little Rich Girl (1965) and My Hustler (1965), and later in each of two 1967 British releases, Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's'isname. It was used several times in the 1969 British film Bronco Bullfrog. BBFC page for Bronco Bullfrog , under "insight" section – LANGUAGE: Infrequent strong language ('f**k') occurs, as well as a single written use of very strong language ('c**t') which appears as graffiti on a wall. According to director Robert Altman, the first time the word fuck was used in a major American studio film was in 1970's M*A*S*H, spoken by Painless during the football match at the end of the film. M*A*S*H (1970) DVD commentary
Early examples of the word "fuck" featuring in music, although adlibbed in the studio rather than being a true part of the lyrics, include drummer Lynn Easton's exclamation 55 seconds into the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" (1963), or the discreet "fucking hell" buried in the mix of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" (1968). MC5 and Jefferson Airplane both used the term "motherfuckers" on their respective 1969 songs "Kick Out the Jams" (from MC5's live album of the same name) and "We Can Be Together" (from Volunteers). Elektra Records created a request clean version of Kick Out the Jams for those offended by the MC5's usage, whereas RCA Records initially refused to release Volunteers uncensored until the band pointed out the label had already released the Hair cast recording with the term. Use of the term "fuck" was still a rare occurrence on rock records in 1976 when the band Doctors of Madness used the word in their song "Out". The Sex Pistols also notoriously used the term on music a year later.
In 2009, the European Union's OHIM trade marks agency disallowed a German brewery to market a beer called "Fucking Hell". The brewery sued, and on March 26, 2010 got permission to market the beer. The company argued that it was actually named after the Austrian village of Fucking (now spelled Fugging) and the German term for light beer, hell (which is simply the word for "light-coloured").
Iancu v. Brunetti is a United States Supreme Court case in which the owner of the clothing brand FUCT (supposedly standing for "Friends U Can't Trust") sued the Patent and Trademark Office, which refused to trademark the name for being "scandalous" under the Lanham Act. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a provision in of the Act, denying registration to any trademarks seen as consisting of immoral or scandalous matter, was an unconstitutional restriction of applicants' freedom of speech.
Still, in 1971, the US Supreme Court decided that the public display of fuck is protected under the First and Fourteenth amendments and cannot be made a criminal offense. In 1968, Paul Robert Cohen had been convicted of disturbing the peace for wearing a jacket with the slogan "Fuck the Draft" (in a reference to conscription in the Vietnam War). The conviction was upheld by the court of appeals and overturned by the Supreme Court in Cohen v. California. Cohen v. California, 403 US 15 (1971).
A replacement word that was used mainly on is fsck, derived from the name of the Unix file system chec king utility.
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