The F-Word

"Everybody should look at this and see how lexicography should be done, because it is a superb piece of work. It’s not a grubby book, or a meretricious book, it’s an amazing piece of scholarship. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter There is a substantial introduction which covers the etymology of “fuck”, the censorship it has received, and the way in which the word has emerged into wider usage from having been absolutely taboo. Then there are a couple of hundred pages dealing with every instance of the word, be it a derivation like “fuckster”, a compound like “fuckwit” or a phrase such as “get fucked”. There are hundreds of them and, just like the Oxford English Dictionary, it has a body of supporting citations. So you’ve got depth of scholarship, depth of knowledge, depth of information and a formidably large number of f-words. The first usages are from around 1500. There was a form of ritual poetic insults called “flytings” and that’s where it starts being used. It’s found quite consistently after that, slipped in by many people. Whether we like it or not – and I have no problem with it – it’s a fascinating word. I don’t think there is a single one like it. It certainly has the most pages devoted to it in the slang dictionaries. For some people it is, and for many more it is not. Think of the hoo-ha raised following the use by a politician in public of the word “fuck”. It may be fanned by TV, newspapers and the Internet, but the hoo-ha is there every time. I know, because I get rung up to comment on it. Perhaps it doesn’t have the kind of shock value it once did, but there is a hoo-ha every time and I can’t see that going away anytime soon."

"This is a great one for showcasing the variety of swearing and all the circumstances in which you can use this one word. It’s all about “fuck.” It’s basically just a dictionary entry, but it sold really well. People are so fascinated with swearing that we like paging through definitions! You can just see how many ways it’s used—as a verb, an adjective, an interjection, and in all these different compounds, as well as euphemisms for it. It starts with “absofuckinglutely” and ends with “zipless fuck,” and in the middle has “dumbfuck,” “frig,” “unfuckable”—so many great words. He’s done this excellent research, so you can see the dates when they were all first used, with quotes. The only one I would have included that’s not in there is “unclefucker” from South Park but maybe that got wider currency. Exactly. “Fuck” is a truly versatile word. Another thing Sheidlower addresses is its etymology . One of the funny things about swearing is how people come up with folk etymologies for how the word came to be. One of the ones for “fuck” was that England’s population was dying of the plague and the king issued a proclamation that said “fornicate under the command of the king” because he wanted to get the population back up. So, “fornicate under the command of the king” was abbreviated “f. u. c. k”. Of course, that’s totally not true. ““Fuck” is a truly versatile word” There’s a story like that for “shit” as well. In ye olden times, people would ship manure across the Atlantic. If you put it at the bottom of the ship’s hold, though, it would heat up and explode. So, the manure crates were labelled “Ship High in Transit” so they’d be put on top. That’s completely ridiculous, obviously, but we feel that swear words deserve etymologies more interesting than “from the proto-Germanic.” Even the 60s British term “naff” is supposed to come from “not available for fucking” somehow. But in this book there are two where the folk etymologies are actually true. These are the army terms “fubar” and “snafu.” “Fubar” means “fucked up beyond all recognition” and “snafu” is “situation normal all fucked up.” I don’t know. I don’t think so. Depending on how you want to look at it, you can either be depressed about the state of publishing or more hopeful. I don’t think it would be different for a swear word book or a dictionary than for any other book period. If you look at The American Time Use Survey, the average American spends less than ten minutes a day reading."