# Word "Fuck" Origin and usage
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 25, 2003, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332 "2003-05-25T02:29:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tcdaniel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tcdaniel)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2003, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/1 "2003-05-25T02:29:03Z")
We were watching “From Hell” starring Johnny Depp tonite. In two scenes, they used the word fuck. If you haven’t seen the movie, it was in the Jack the Ripper, London era.
My wife said they didn’t use that word then.
I thought about it and said they could’ve.
Any english majors out there to answer if it was part of the language there and then?
thanks for settlin this dispute.
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### Author:  [@bradministrator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bradministrator)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2003, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/2 "2003-05-25T02:38:30Z")
[http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorf.htm#fuck](http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorf.htm#fuck)
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2003, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/3 "2003-05-25T02:40:26Z")
THe word goes back hundreds of years farther than 1888.
Some contemporary print usages recorded by the OED.
> [@](#):
>
> c1863 PHILO CUNNUS Festival of Passions II. 54 That female nation who being encamped near their enemies were fucked, during a truce, by the hostile party. 1869 ROSSETTI Let. 15 Sept. (1965) II. 743 If Byron fd his sister he fd her and there an end. c1888-94 My Secret Life IV. 64 Then a dread came over me. I had fucked a common street nymph.
>
> c1888-94 My Secret Life III. 228 This house had but eight rooms, and two mere closets to let out for fucking. Ibid. VIII. 307 She was…a magnificent bit of fucking flesh, but nothing more. 1893 FARMER & HENLEY Slang III. 80/2 Fucking…Adj., A qualification of extreme contumely. Adv. Intensitive and expletive; a more violent form of bloody. 1893 FARMER & HENLEY Slang III. 80/2 Fucker. 1. A lover. 2. A term of endearment, admiration, derision, etc.
>
> 1874 Lett. fr. Friend in Paris II. 168, I had always held that dear mamma was the best fuck in the family, and in every way a most desirable and splendid creature.
For a more extensive history of the word’s use and variations, see [The F Word, by Jesse Sheidlower](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679764275/qid=1053830570/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/103-4118569-9225438?v=glance&s=books)
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### Author:  [@Back\_Lot\_Brawl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Back_Lot_Brawl)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2003, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/4 "2003-05-25T03:29:16Z")
My however-many-greats-grandfather used the word in the mid-1800s in letters to friends. It was used back then.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2003, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/5 "2003-05-25T03:42:24Z")
Hooray for NSFW thread titles in GQ.
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### Author:  [@Grelby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grelby)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2003, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/6 "2003-05-25T03:58:56Z")
A check on [Dictionary.com](http://Dictionary.com) ([http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fuck](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fuck)) reveals that the origins of ‘fuck’ are rather unclear, but that it has always been considered vulgar. Apparently its first recorded use in in code in a poem:
> [@](#):
>
> Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime 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,” that is, “fleas, flies, and friars.” The line that contains fuck reads “Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk.” The Latin words “Non sunt in coeli, quia,” mean “they [the friars] are not in heaven, since.” The code “gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk” is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields “fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli.” The whole thus reads in translation: “They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].”
Merriam-Webster ([http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=fuck](http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=fuck)) notes that it is akin to the Dutch _fokken_ (to breed) and to the Swedish dialect _fokka_ (to copulate).
That would seem to indicate that the origin lies way back in the old Germanic languages, before the split between Western and Northern Germanic Languages (English and Dutch are Western Germanic languages; Swedish is Northern). Language family tree is [here.](http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.html)
Was this any help?
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### Author:  [@Ficer67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ficer67)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/7 "2003-05-26T05:28:29Z")
Fuck means Fornication Under Commission to the King, and has to do with legalizing prostitution in some towns in old england. I did a report on this in the fucking ninth grade because I smarted off to a teacher. I found all my sources in the local library.
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### Author:  [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/8 "2003-05-26T05:38:13Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Ficer67 \*
> \*\*Fuck means Fornication Under Commission to the King, and has to do with legalizing prostitution in some towns in old england. I did a report on this in the fucking ninth grade because I smarted off to a teacher. I found all my sources in the local library. \*\*
Nope.
[http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.htm](http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.htm)
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### Author:  [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/9 "2003-05-26T05:40:59Z")
Your library sources, and your report, were incorrect, **Ficer67**. [A Cecil article.](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_268b.html)
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### Author:  [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/10 "2003-05-26T05:41:40Z")
And you are utterly wrong. See the link above, or any major dictionary’s etymology.
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### Author:  [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/11 "2003-05-26T05:42:50Z")
Sheesh, I answer the phone and 2 people get there first.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/12 "2003-05-26T22:44:25Z")
I think it is safe to say that almost any claimed etymology that is based on acronym, for a word more than a handful of decades old, is false.
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### Author:  [@Grelby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grelby)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2003, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/13 "2003-05-27T00:40:45Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Ficer67 \*
> \*\*Fuck means Fornication Under Commission to the King, and has to do with legalizing prostitution in some towns in old england. I did a report on this in the fucking ninth grade because I smarted off to a teacher. I found all my sources in the local library. \*\*
No indeed - check my post; based on these sources, it seems apparent that the origins of the word lie way back before Dutch, Swedish, German and English became distincy, modern languages. As for its use in English, I believe that the excerpt I quoted from [Dictionary.com](http://Dictionary.com) is, if not the, then one of the earliest examples of its use in print - in the 16th century. It undoubtedly was in common use well before then, but subject to censure because of its vulgarity. This is well before the invention of acronyms, which are a very modern creation.
It’s no more true that it stands for Fornication Under the Commission of the King than it is true that golf is an acronym for Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden.
~Grelby
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### Author:  [@tcdaniel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tcdaniel)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2003, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-fuck-origin-and-usage/177332/14 "2003-05-27T03:01:12Z")
Thanks to all posters here for the “fuck” facts
My wife said - hm oh yeah?
Yep.