They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
—Philip Larkin, 1971.
I’m quite lucky, I think, in that my parents’ most major fuck-up was sorted out pretty much as soon as I hit nursery school. I was a cute little kid—before my chubby stage hit I was blonde, pigtailed and blue-eyed. Detracting slightly from my angelic appearance, however, was the fact that by the time I was four, I was expertly using just about every mummy-effing swear word in the book.
My parents forgot, somewhere along the way, to tell us kids that it’s not socially acceptable to mutter “fuck it” if you hit a snake during a game of Snakes and Ladders. So, after four years of living in a profane household, I was (not literally, of course) “fuck”-ing and “shit”-ting all over the place.
They were smart, those Bermudian nursery school teachers. Every time I swore, a cake of soap would be held out in front of me until I poked my tongue out and gave it a tiny, reluctant lick. This technique seems a little dated, unkind even, but I swear that every time I “fuck” or “shit” these days I get a faint taste of soap in the back of my mouth. Again, please do not take me literally here.
I’m no longer confronted with a bar of soap when I curse, but I have noticed that a few students seem to have taken offence to the occasional coarseness of the writing in this magazine. I swear as naturally, and almost as frequently, as I breathe, so I’ve decided it’s about time I sit down and have a good think about what I’m actually saying when I use the word ‘fuck’.
‘Fuck’ has always been my favourite profanity, mainly because of its versatility.
“Fuckety fuck! The fucking fucker’s fucked!” is a kick-ass way of saying ‘Oh dear, the bloody idiot is in big trouble’. The word ‘fuck’ literally means, according to the OED, ‘an act of sexual intercourse’. There’s no reason that us new-age kids should be offended or affronted by someone exclaiming the word “sex”, even those who think it’s sacred (like me, Dad).
Of course, there’s more to it than that. Whilst when we say “I fucked John Smith last night” it means “I had sex with John Smith last night”, ‘fucked’ is also used to imply that something is destroyed or defiled; “My computer is fucked”. As Wiki-too-lazy-to-actually-research-pedia points out, linking sex and destruction is bad. Bad and ridiculous. But now we enter that age-old debate about whether the prolific usage of the word ‘fuck’ is enough for us to justifiably say that its meaning is no longer offensive. I am absolutely in the ‘don’t use the word gay as an insult’ boat, but I am a keen advocate of the word ‘fuck’. It is less offensive to me because our society does not so overtly objectify people who have sex; in fact, most of us are pretty fond of it.
Some people don’t like words like ‘fuck’ for religious reasons, but for you guys, I’ve found a loophole. Sure, the Bible makes it quite obvious that cursing is wrong—Peter 3:10 declares, “For, whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech”. Everyone in cyberspace, however, seems to agree that the word ‘fuck’ officially appeared first in a poem written around 1500, way before the Bible was written. So it totally doesn’t count.
Offensiveness and literal meanings aside, boy does a good ‘fuck’ feel great. The harsh ‘k’ sound at the end has a kick to it that ‘golly’ will never have, and the naughty feeling it gives me when I use it in a public place reminds me of the days when I would sneak out at night to meet my friends at the local park.
Fuck it. ‘Fuck’ is a fucking great word. And shitting fuck, ‘shit’ is too. Urgh. Soap. I have to stop—my saliva is starting to lather.
I can’t believe you diss Wikipedia for not doing research and then come out with drivel like “a poem written in 1500 way before the Bible was written” WTF? don’t you know how ancient the bible is?? Do you mean before the Bible was printed? 1425. translated into English 1383 translated into Greek 200BC into Latin 383 AD.
Ha! It is supposed to say AFTER.The poem was printed in 1500, way AFTER the Bible was written.
Oh dear. I bet there’ll be a few angry letters about that one.
I was ‘dissing’ myself for being too lazy to actually research. I like Wikipedia. I read a great Wikipedia article about pygmy marmosets last night. They’re so cool.
You sound pretty angry. Don’t be, I’m quite nice you know.
Love,
Juliet
Ahhhhh, ’bout time they released a sequel to the bible, it’s been 2000 years.
The Da Vinci Code bro
Well strictly speaking the Christian parts of the bible are a sequel to a little something called the old testament. Like most sequels it ran out of steam because it was hard to top the sex, incest, rape, torture and random violence as the original. As Juliet points out they even tried to cut down the bad language. Never going to keep a franchise going that way.
Should have had more screen time for the sodomites, they were the best characters in there.
“translated into Greek 200BC”
Oh true, I didn’t know that the Greeks translated the Bible before Christ. In fact, I didn’t realise that Christianity existed before Christ. Thanks for that insight and correction.
I thought that the word fuck was invented during the crusades. The British crusaders would be leaving their wives for a really long time, and wanted to have sex on the road (unfortunately probably rape) but were bound to be faithful to their wives due to their holy marriage vowels ( religion being taken a lot more seriously at the time in England, …..hence the Crusades ). So the King (being the head of all matters holy and secular at the time) granted crusaders permission to sleep with other women while they were on their mission. This consent was officialy called Fornication Under Consent of King, or more commonly by the acronym, FUCK. This explanation could explain the sexual connotations the word carries today, and also the controversial nature of the word (essentially being a consent to sin). I cant remember who told me this, but it’s at least plausible……at the very very least.
Well the original use is likely to be for sexual reasons, as the OED’s oldest entries are for that:
1528 [implied in FUCKING adj. 1]. 1568 (?a1513) W. DUNBAR Poems (1998) 106 Be his feirris he wald haue fukkit.
1568 D. LINDSAY Answer Kingis Flyting 49 in Wks. (1931) I. 103 Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour.
1663 R. HEAD Hic et Ubique I. vi. 18, I did creep in..and there I did see putting [sic] the great fuck upon my weef
Those people knew how to use fuck tactfully and poetically. I especially like Lindsay’s alliteration.
Other uses don’t appear until later on in the 19th century. Of course I don’t claim for the OED to be the be all end all on the word, but its a pretty good source.
I’m with JVegas here- although I’ve heard about that acronym business too. Even if it has no foundation, isn’t it a super-cool theory?
The best theories have no foundation, ya feel me Dan Brown? Hahaha. But yea, I’m also down with JVegas on this one, seems pretty water-tight, particularly compared with my source-less story about the horny crusaders.
Fuckin’ oath, bloody corker