What the Fuck?

What the fuck… don’t fuck with me… fuckin A… flying fuck… fuck off… fuck you… fuck….

I was going through my referrers log and checking searches that yielded Madfish Willie's. A google search for historical origins of fuck yields Madfish Willie's Cyber Saloon: Fuck You! as #5 result. Here is a recap of some of the top results and sonn we'll all know where the fuck fuck came from.

Here's the second fucking day of fuck:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-f-word.htm

Description: Folk etymology
Status: False
Circulating since: 1960s
Analysis: See below
Origin of the F-Word

Variant #1
Email text contributed by T. McInnis, 22 March 2001:

In ancient England a person could not have sex unless you had consent of the King (unless you were in the Royal Family). When anyone wanted to have a baby, they got consent of the King, the King gave them a placard that they hung on their door while they were having sex. The placard had F.*.*.*. (Fornication Under Consent of the King) on it. Now you know where that came from.

Variant #2
From a Usenet posting, 1 Nov 1990:

The word fuck comes from colonial times, when someone would be punished for 'prostitution' It was an acronym for the words 'For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge' FUCK was written on the stocks that held these criminals because For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge was too long to go on the stocks.

Variant #3
From a Usenet posting, 12 Oct 1990:

I always heard that "F.U.C.K." originated in the 1800's in London, when they used to charge prostitutes "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge". So officer got sick and tired of writing those, um, lessee, 26 characters, not including spaces, so it got abbreviated FUCK and stuck.

Comments: Having consulted the definitive reference work on this subject (yes, there is such a thing: "The F-Word" by Jesse Sheidlower, published by Random House in 1999), we feel confident in dismissing the above claims as imaginative bunk.

The word "fuck" did not originate as an acronym. It crept, fully formed, into the English language from Dutch or Low German around the 15th century — it's impossible to say precisely when because so little documentary evidence exists, probably due to the fact that the word was so taboo throughout its early history that people were afraid to write it down. (The American Heritage Dictionary says its first known occurrence in English literature was in the satirical poem, "Flen, Flyss" (c.1500), where it was both disguised as a Latin word and encrypted — "gxddbov," deciphered as "fuccant," pseudo-Latin for "they fuck.")

According to Sheidlower, the earliest print mentions of supposed acronymic origins for the F-word appeared in the 1960s. An underground newspaper called the East Village Other published this version in 1967: It's not commonly known that the word "fuck" originated as a medical diagnostic notation on the documests of soldiers in the British Imperial Army. When a soldier reported sick and was found to have V.D., the abbreviation F.U.C.K. was stamped on his documents. It was short for "Found Under Carnal Knowledge."

Two more variants appeared in a letter published in Playboy magazine in 1970: My friend claims that the word fuck originated in the 15th Century, when a married couple needed permission from the king to procreate. Hence, Fornication Under Consent of the King. I maintain that it's an acronym of a law term used in the 1500s that referred to rape as "Forced Unnatural Carnal Knowledge."

Undoubtedly the most famous use of this etymological travesty was as the title of the 1991 Van Halen album, "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge."

Last updated: 11/06/02