SubscribeIt is often classed as one of the archetypal Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, but it isn’t Anglo-Saxon — it’s not recorded until the fifteenth century. The first known appearance is in a Latin poem dated sometime before 1500 that satirises the Carmelite friars of Cambridge. It includes the line Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. The code can easily be broken to read Non sunt in coeli, quia fvccant vvivys of heli. Being translated, this says “They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely”. Fuccant (in modern spelling) looks like Latin, but it’s a humorous fake — fuck is actually Germanic, related to Middle Dutch fokken, Norwegian fukka and Swedish focka.
The word seems from the start to have been regarded as unacceptable in polite company. It remained almost entirely unprintable other than in privately circulated material until the 1960s, though it has been in sustained and constant use in coarse speech, of course. In 1948, the publishers of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead forced him to bowdlerise it as fug, leading to the (surely apocryphal) story that Dorothy Parker remarked on meeting him, “So you’re the young man who can’t spell fuck?”
So what should we do with it? Should we return it to the consignor? Then we would not be able to share it with those who would be amused by it and/or appreciate it as a significant historical item. Should we put it in the catalog for the spring auction? That is our inclination, because it’s such an interesting item, not because it’s particularly valuable. But we are still a little concerned that we might wind up offending some readers. To help us decide how to proceed, we sent a copy of the document to a few collectors and historians for their thoughts....So, while we’re deciding exactly what to do with this item, we’re putting it here on the REA blog. We know that some collectors and historians will enjoy seeing this. If we get complaints, we can always take down it down. This item will appear in the REA spring catalog.You don't say!
"A Philadelphia scribe, in commenting on the rowdy ball playing of 1894 in the League ranks, says: "We could fill pages with evidence of the rowdyism indulged in by the majority of the League teams during the season of 1894, and that, too, if we were only to confine ourselves to the local reports of the season at Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and half a dozen other cities." As the Cleveland Leader hadit, in commenting upon one of the Baltimore-Cleveland games:
"I say it with reluctance--for I have always admired Ned Hanlon's pluck--that the national game never received so severe a set-back as it did during the last Baltimore series here. The effort to spike players, the constant flow of profanity and vulgarity, the incessant and idiotic abuse of an umpire, all combined to make the Baltimore club--that local people have been led to believe was made of a crowd of earnest, honest players--thoroughly despised and detested. In ten years' experience in scoring games in Cleveland I have never heard such a torrent of vulgarity, profanity and brutal, senseless abuse heaped upon an umpire as Lynch stood from the Baltimore players upon the field here."
Similar charges against visiting teams were made by the Pittsburgh people against the Cleveland team; by the Philadelphia scribes against the Bostons, etc. In fact, proof, and plenty of it, was easily attainable from the reports from every League city during 1894, to a more or less extent.
The question apropos to this comment is, "What are you going to do about it" in 1895, Messrs. Magnates?
Prior to the 1898 season Brush floated another "Brush Rule" past his fellow owners, this one stating that any player who addressed an umpire or fellow player in a "villainously filthy" manner would be brought before a three-man disciplinary board and banished for life if found guilty. The players received the rule about as well as Brush's 1889 edict limiting their salaries, and it had about the same lasting impact.
2. Used profanely in imprecations and exclamations as the coarsest equivalent of DAMN v. 5."Fucking" used in a non-copulation sense ('as a mere intensive') goes back much further, to mid-1500s:
1922 JOYCE Ulysses 587 God fuck old Bennett! 1929 F. MANNING Middle Parts of Fortune II. xv. 379 ‘Fuck the bloody thing!’ he said fiercely under his breath. 1955 S. BECKETT Molloy 69 Fuck the son of a bitch. 1959 F. KING So Hurt & Humiliated 151 ‘Suppose any of the neighbours were to look out and see them.’ ‘Oh, f{em} the neighbours!’ ‘Really, Henry!’ 1969 ‘J. MORRIS’ Fever Grass ii. 24 Why don't you..tell whoever it is to go fuck themselves?
Hence {sm}fucking vbl. n. Also as ppl. a. and adv., used esp. as a mere intensive.James Joyce really seems to be the pioneer in this field.
a1568 A. SCOTT Poems iv. 55 Thir foure, the suth to sane, Enforsis thame to fucking. 1680 ROCHESTER Poems on Several Occasions (1950) 30 Through all the Town, the common Fucking Post, On whom each Whore, relieves her tingling Cunt. 1707 [see FRIGGING vbl. n.]. 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. 1922 JOYCE Ulysses 580 I'll wring the neck of any bugger says a word against my fucking king.
An even more important term than politically
correct is fuck. This is, of course, an ancient word,
traced by the OED back to 1503. Recently, an entire
book was devoted to the history of the “F word,” enti-
tled The F Word and compiled by Jesse Sheidlower,
the Principal Editor of the OED’s North American
Editorial Unit. In his introduction, Sheidlower
writes, “The word may not have been openly printed
in any form in the United States until 1926.”
Lexis and Westlaw show otherwise. John Baker,
a securities lawyer and amateur philologist in
Washington, D.C., recently discovered through a
Westlaw search that fuck was printed in the Reports
of Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court
of the State of Missouri in 1846. The case of Edgar
v. McCutchen, appearing at 9 Mo. 768, consisted in
its entirety of the following...See the article also for comments on "cocksucker."
Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large at the Oxford English Dictionary and the author of the excellent scholarly book "The F Word," agrees that an official letter wouldn't spell out those words. But, also writing by e-mail, after this column was first published, he argues that the letter is probably a joke from the period: "If it is a contemporaneous hoax -- a send-up of management -- it's more likely that these words would be spelled out, and that the variety of examples offered would be so extreme. It's funnier that way!"I'll be extremely interested to see if there's any followup from Nunberg.
Sheidlower, the "F Word" author, corrected an assertion made in this column's original version that the letter contained the earliest printed use of the word "cocksucker" as an insult and the phrase "go fuck yourself."
"The Historical Dictionary of American Slang has an 1897 example of 'go and fuck yourself,'" he writes -- a citation this column missed. "And I have found evidence of nonliteral 'cocksucker' from the 1860s, in Civil War court martial records."
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