It is of constant annoyance to me when this word is used in (inaccurate) historical films. Braveheart comes to mind and just last night the TV serial The Tudors has King Henry using the ‘f’ word. I have read Cecil’s column in order to discover the origins of this word and although there is evidence to suggest this word derives from our Germanic friends I would suggest another. At the turn of the 19th Century was the crime of rape not referred to as Forceful Unlawful Carnal Knowledge ( F.U.C.K.)? I do not believe this term was used before then. Is there a possibility of coincidence or am I right?
So are you otherwise happy that the characters spoke in real life the way the actors did?
When I had just started learning of the existence of cuss words (mid 70’s), I assumed that they were of very recent invention, by various teenagers across the nation (“Jimmy Jubel of Trenton, NJ, coined the term “fuck” at age 13 in 1953, and it rapidly spread from there all over the country within 7 years”). Earlier generations used their own cuss words, which quickly became obsolete as a given generation got older-I assumed that no adult would stoop so low as to continue to cuss into his twenties (as the only people I heard say such words were my peers). Yeah curse the overactive imagination of a gifted yet very sheltered teenager…
Snopes says What the Fuck?
Speak you of country matters?
Cecil responds to What’s the origin of the “F” word?
I always thought it meant Fornication Under the Consent of the King.
For goodness sake, READ the links that get provided!! 
I should have gone to Wikipedia. I don’t think we will ever know the true origin.
The point of my query is that I don’t believe people did speak in these terms historically, but it is interesting to have other peoples comments on this subject.
Thank you
Thanks Chez, this has been an education.
Okay, we’ve established that it’s a very old word, and not an acronym. But as far as I know, the modern useage of fucking as a general intensifier, rather than a literal term, is fairly recent. That always bugged me about the cursing on the HBO show “Deadwood”; although contemporary accounts mention the abundant foul language in the town, on the show they elected to go with modern-sounding cursing (basically using fuck in every sentence) rather than 19th century cursing, which probably would have relied more on colorful blasphemies.
There’s no anachronism involved in Henry VIII’s use of the word. The two earliest cites in the OED both date from his reign and it’s likely the word goes back further.
Well, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, used the word frequently in his poems, written in the 1670s. If you google “Earl Rochester fuck” you’ll get several hits.
One of his most famous was a Satyr on Charles II . When it came to the King’s attention, he had to flee the court for a while. The first verse reads:
In another poem, The Imperfect Enjoyment, he scolds his own member for having failed him at a crucial point, and contrasts that with previous encounters:
Acronyms as the supposed origin of words before approximately 1910 are almost always wrong:
People just didn’t do acronyms back then. The few examples we can find before 1910 are reduced even further if we eliminate initialisms (where the letters are pronounced separately, rather than as part of a word). (Please, please don’t start an argument about whether initialisms are a type of acronym or something different.)
Or rather, acronyms themselves are old, it’s just acronyms as word origins which are new. Before the early 1900s, when people used an acronym, they fit it into an existing word, rather than coining a new word. “Ichthos”, for instance, was the Greek word for “Fish” long before anyone applied it to Jesus.
Exception: acronyms are common in Hebrew.
Another exception: “OK.”