Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Jesse Sheidlower: The F-Word

Well let's get this fucking show on the road chalet. Hi everyone. My name said again and on behalf of Harvard bookstore I'd like to welcome you to tonight's event with Jesse Shad Lauer. He joins us to discuss the most recent edition of his book The F-word. Today's event is one of many fantastic events here at Harvard bookstore this fall upcoming ticketed events include appearances by new R.M. James Ellroy former Secretary of State Madeline Albright esteemed novelist E.L. Doctorow memoirs Cambridge Phil Jamieson and religious scholar Karen Armstrong. You can find information about these events and others on the dance floor at the information desk or right here. You can find events listed online at Harvard dot com as well of course the best way to find about all of our events is by subscribing to our weekly e-mail newsletter. You can do that by going to Harvard dot com and clicking on subscribe. Also there are a newsletter you hear about breaking news like today's joint announcement with Google on demand books and Harvard bookstore. We are thrilled to announce the imminent arrival of an in-store print on demand book machine after September 29 will be able to print literally millions of out of print and print on demand titles right here in

the store in mere minutes. We'll also be able to work directly with as yet published authors to bring to print copies of their work to mine for him to find out more information about our book machine including a naming contest we're having for it. You go to Harvard dot com slash Book Machine. You might have noticed we have a camera in the house tonight. Harvard bookstore is pleased to have the WGBH form network taping tonight's event. The recording the talk as well as the question and answer session. So please note that when you ask a question you provide consent for your voice to be recorded and broadcast. The one thing we do not want to hear tonight of course is your cell phone. So please take a moment now to switch off or silence your cell phones. After our talk this evening Mr. Sha'ath will answer questions from the audience. And after that we'll have a book signing right here at this table. You'll find copies of the F-word available at the right registers. And of course you have my personal thanks for buying your books from Harvard bookstore and attending our events. Your participation supports not only this author event serious but a landmark and independent bookstore. Tonight I'm very pleased to

welcome Jesse Sheidlower who joins us today to discuss his wonderfully Rancilio educational book the f word but then entered it with an introduction courtesy of f bomb specialist Lewis Black. The F-word presents a thorough and at times thoroughly shocking discourse on the most loved word curse word in the English language. My mother and my boss here in the front row forgive me but the book spans the use of the F word from Absa fucking loosely to cluster fuck to only M F G to the zipless fuck illuminating how and why the F word has become a ubiquitous part of the English language. Local author and language X expert Professor Steven Pinker says that quote This book is not just a testament to the poetic genius of ordinary English speakers with its delicious delicious examples of alliteration rhyme metaphor imagery and meter but is also a goldmine of information about language sexuality and social norms. You'll never hear the F word in the same way again. Just how is currently editor at large at the Oxford English Dictionary where he has been for the last decade. His current responsibilities

focus chiefly on the revision of the American and Canadian entries for the OED. Before that he was an editor at The Random House reference department specializing in slang and new words. While there he wrote a language column called Jesse's word of the day. Mr. Shaw there has been about language for a wide range of publications including The New York Times and monthly Harper's book form in various scholarly journals. He's a regular contributor to Slate and is considered one of the world's foremost foremost authorities on obscenity in the English language. You can learn more about Jesse Sheidlower by visiting his website. Just use the word dot com. Everyone thank you so much for joining us tonight and thank you for your patience. Please join me in welcoming Jesse Sheidlower. Thanks very much. I did ask if it was OK to use the word fuck during this talk it makes it much easier but it's by no means necessary. TV and radio they're often very worried about how I'm going to get on

without without getting someone into trouble in fact that's perfectly easy to talk for an hour without using the word itself. Everyone knows what we're talking about but. But we're all adults here so there's no reason to to avoid things. So one of the questions people often ask about this book is you know why did you write it. I think it's self-evident that it's interesting enough in its own right. But you know one of the answers I like giving is that well because I can in fact you know there aren't that many words that you could write an entire book about and you know all of those very very few of them are going to be terribly interesting to read. You know you could put all of the you know the OED entry for set into into a book and it would be pretty long but pretty boring I think. But in terms of why I like quoting the epigraph of the book which is from Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth part to which is needful that the most in modest word be looked upon and learned. Of course this doesn't mean the fact that you can write a book about something doesn't mean that something is

necessarily OK. And you know as with all good literary quotations this one is taken completely out of context because the actual passage reads fuller version to gain the language his needful that the most modest word be looked upon and learned which once attained your Highness news comes to no further use to. But to be known and hated. So I want to start off just reading a bit from the introduction about the origins origins of the word. I'll read one or two other things from the intro and a little bit about the book itself and then take questions I usually find of things I'm going to talk about or things that people tend to ask about anyway. So regardless of how much time I spend I think people you know will get to the good stuff. Where it's from the word fuck definitely did not originate is an acronym as many people think acronyms are very rare before the 1030 as in etymologies of this sort especially for older words are almost always false. Now the word posh does not come from Port outward starboard home

copies not from Constable on patrol in Tipp is not from a To Insure Promptness. In general if anyone ever tells you that something is from an acronym and you say no it's not. You'll be right all of the time. This is not to say that there aren't words that do come from an act from acronyms. There are but no one is going to come up to a party and say Do you know that radio that radar stands for radar detection and ranging. Just one have the only things that they will say because they think are interesting or ones that are false. So if you simply say that you'll probably be right. To my knowledge the earliest suggestion of an academic etymology appears in The New York underground newspaper the East Village rather in 1967 and read. It's not commonly known that the word fuck originated as a medical diagnostic notation on the documents of soldiers in the British Imperial Army. When a soldier reported sick and was found to have VD the reflation F U C K was stamped on his documents. It was short for found under carnal knowledge. The

more usual variant along these lines is for on lawful carnal knowledge which was abbreviated to fucking allegedly worn on a badge by adulterous rapists or prostitutes and some kind of mythical olden times and other variants of this track are found in Unlawful Carnal Knowledge for adulterers or forced unsolicited carnal knowledge for rapists. The other common acronym is fornication under consent of the King which is usually said to have been some kind of a license granted by a monarch in some time specifically to repopulate the country after Ripley. The earliest I know this variant is 970 in Playboy. But in reality fuck is a word of Germanic origin. It's related to words in several other Germanic languages including Dutch in German Swedish Norwegian that have sexual meanings as well as meanings such as to strike or to move back and forth. Ultimately these words represent a family of loosely related verbs that have the structural form of an F plus some kind of short vowel Plus a stop consonant a consonant like a d g or T and these words usually have the basic meaning to move back and

forth and sometimes the figurative meaning to cheat. So English examples in this family all of which are found later than a FUCK ARE fiddle fidget flip flip flicker and frig the English word was probably borrowed in the fifteenth century from German Flemish or Dutch although again the word is found earlier in English than its equivalents in any of these languages. There's no way to know for sure which languages is the ultimate source. Fuck is not an Anglo-Saxon word. The term Anglo-Saxon probably refers to the early period of a earliest period of English around eleven hundred eighty or earlier which is usually called Old Old English now by scholars and fuck just isn't found this early so it's not Anglo-Saxon except in the extended sense were Anglo-Saxons used just to mean you know earthy or bawdy or straightforward. There are various claims that certain words in older Middle English do represent early examples of fuck. These are usually unprovable. There was the etymologist Carl darling buck in the 1049 dictionary of selected synonyms in the principal Europe the European languages cited a 12 78 example of the name John le

fucker. There are several problems with this one examples that he didn't cite the source for this and no one's ever found his reference. But even if it's real there are various other possibilities for the name. Fulcher a soldier is probably the most likely. And there are some other things that people have suggested but. Are unlikely or at the very least unprovable. There are related words in some other languages that people have put forward a Latin food or a or it's reflex or French food for example. These are also they're not related even though they have sexual meanings and begin with the letter F.. They're not related. So despite the frequency of the word now no one's found an example of where any of the Germanic relatives before the late 15th century the lateness of the evidence can have more than one explanation. It could just be that that's how old the word is period. The usual Middle English word for sexual intercourse was why of which is now either totally obsolete or just you know archaic people or authors who like reviving

old words will use it on occasion. Just a reason to take it's places that became more rare or the most likely reason of course that fuckhead a taboo so strong that it just wasn't written down. And in fact the very earliest example we have is already enciphered form so this example is from around a manuscript written around four thousand nine hundred five. It's it's a poem written in a mixture of English and Latin. The English words typically have pseudo Latin endings and there are a few a few dirty words in this in this poem. Fuck is one and is is the other. In both cases they're written with a cipher where each letter of the of the word being spelled is replaced by the next letter in the alphabet which is really remarkable for this time but again it suggests very clearly that you know that this must have been considered pretty taboo. The poem itself it was a satirical attack on the monks of a monastery in Ealy which is a town in Cambridge

here and translating the Latin out it reads. They say that as the monks of this monastery they are not in heaven because they are fucking the wives of Heli. After that we do have. Use me a relatively straightforward run of examples. If you look far enough there are a number of examples throughout the sixteenth century. It was very common in Scottish sources although there were English examples as well. It was common thereafter. It's hard to tell. It's always hard to tell from negative evidence how offensive a word was I mean we know that we don't have many examples we know that examples that we do have appear in certain types of sources to be letters or manuscripts or you know bawdy plays. But there are very few very clear examples where you know exactly how offensive it was was discussed. We know there's no example of course in

Shakespeare although there are various cases where he might be putting on it the Merry Wives of Windsor or there was a part where someone talks about the fact active case with an F which is putting on the vocative case which is used for direct address in Latin and immediately after saying fuck it of case there's a whole raft of lewd wordplay including sexual puns on Latin words and references to various English words for the sexual organs. So that's you know that's one possibility. In Henry the Fifth there is a passage where during a princess Catherine's in which lesson where the word food for the French equivalent is discussed and she talks about how you know this is horrible were wicked vulgar and indecent in French saying this. There are two relatively clear examples to contemn Shakespeare. Most amusingly in Twelfth Night There's a scene where Olivia's brother Mel folio receives a letter written by Maria but it's in a Livia's handwriting and he's looking over the letter and

and and saying that he thinks it's from Bolivia and he says you know by my life this is my lady's hand these be these be her very sees her use and her t's. And if you read the and and it's you know sees her use and tease and thus she makes her great peas. So he's not only spelling out but makes a pun on P in the process. But in any case there's no no clear example there. One of the best examples we have explicit English erotica before the Victorian era is very rare there isn't really that much of it in nothing. Nothing extremely explicit. One exception is a relatively recently discovered work called The School of Venus from 16 80. This exists in a single manuscript in Munich and it hasn't been. It's only just recently been been published or been edited and published. And it takes it's presented in the style of a dialogue between a sexually experienced older woman and her young niece. This format was especially common in the 18th century allows you to

have highly explicit sexual discussions to appear in the guise of instruction or medical texts of this sort or you know pseudo medical texts which were actually just erotica basically. This one is extremely explicit and the author of the work was appears to have been unusually interested in language. The characters discuss at one point to the precise differences in meaning among occupy fuck sois if and the verb incumbent and elsewhere the older woman explains why men use offensive words like con to during intercourse. And we get one. One passage specifically about how offensive the word fuck was. There are other words which sound better and are often used before company instead of swiping and fucking. Which is too gross and downright body fit only to be used among dissolute persons to avoid scandal men will thus modestly say I kissed her. I made much of her. I received a favor from her or the like. The famous people we know who used it there were some of the famous Scottish authors in 16th

century Dunbar used it in the 17th century we have examples from Lord Rochester of Robert Burns used in the 18th century in letter two cases both from unpublished many unpublished things were many scripts intended for private circulation only. One of the early dictionary appearances actually will not really early the early stationary period was in 15 98 it was in. Italian English Dictionary it was one of the words translating the ten telling word. But Captain Francis gross the author of the Classical Dictionary of the vulgar tongue in 1785 he was a good friend of Berne so he put it in but spelled it with dashes. F dash k. A good example of how unfamiliar There are no famous authors who used it in any kind of real print form throughout the 1900. One example of how unfamiliar some Victorians were with body vocabulary there is a famous example from Robert Browning where he

encountered in a 17th century poem the couplet they talked of his having a cardinal's hat. They'd send him as soon an old nuns twat and he apparently didn't know what this word meant he thought because it was talking about a cardinal's hat in the previous line he assumed that twat was some part of a nun's habit and in Pippa Passes he he has a section where he talks about Cowles and twats. But of course all this doesn't mean that the word was only used in for John Farmer in Henley's slang and it's on analog which was the great Slang Dictionary of the 1900 in one of the greatest ever published. This is privately printed volume with Falk appeared in 1793 and by the way by privately printed. The farmer himself had a great deal of trouble with the printing process. The first volume was printed it was a seven volume work I mean this is a very large slang dictionary. The second volume was the one that had constant fuck in it and when the printer got the manuscript he refused to

print it and farmer had to find another printer in the meantime sued the original printer for breach of contract for you know to recover the costs necessary to switch printers. And all of this is recorded Now there was a very long legal case that was appealed for this and all the records are preserved. And so basically the jury took about three seconds to say you know forget it there's no way that they could possibly know that he could have printed this is a ridiculous even though they had scholars come in testify about well of course you know this is a profit working you need to discuss the history need to include these words and he lost instantly. But again it is an example of how how hard it is to come across examples of things like this. Fucking is an adjective. Just as an intensive. The earliest example that we absolutely have for absolute that we're absolutely sure of is in fact in farmer in Hamleys dictionary. There is an example that I think of that I do quote in the book I think it's real from the 1860s. But but it's in it's

informing him he was a very clear definition. They call it common. So even though this is the first example we have you know they think it's common then. So you know things aren't written down we do you know we do the best we can to try to find examples. But you know we never know what we're going to find it's just it's hard doing this kind of work. It became more and more common of course throughout the you know throughout the 20th century began expanding especially in World War 1 World War 2. When you have people thrown together from various walks of life. Being encouraged to behave in ways where this vocabulary with this kind of language was acceptable 1060 is even more examples. But just winding back a bit to some things that are that are useful to find when you when you can have. Examples that tell you something about how the word how the word was was taken the earliest example I know of from America the always printed example I should say is

from a Supreme Court case. Well the Supreme Court of Missouri state Supreme Court in 1846 one of the great things recently is that the more the more older sources are digitized we can find things like this relatively relatively easily and the legal cases are great for searching for vocabulary like this because at least theoretically when you have to write down everything that's that's occurring in a case. If the case concerns bad language it will appear there. A colleague of mine has spent a fair bit of time working on the Civil War court martial records in the National Archives. And these are just golden I mean you find these examples where a private eye is court martialed because he called his sergeant all sorts of offensive things and you know everything that they said is written down. So in this 1846 case it was about a man who had been accused of having sex with a mare and he sued for slander. They appealed the verdict verdict in the rejection of the appeal the court wrote slanderous toward was carnal knowledge of the mayor and the word fuck was used to convey the imputation.

After the verdict for the plaintiff a motion made an arrest or a judgment for the reason that the word used to convey the slander was unknown to the English language and was not understood by those to whom it was spoken. The motion was overruled and repealed. Because of the modesty of our lexicographers restrains them from publishing obscene words or from giving these obscene signification to words that may be used without conveying any obscenity. It does not follow that they are not English words and not understood by those who hear them or that chaste words may not be applied so as to be understood in an obscene sense by everyone who hears them. So in other words fuck was well known and well understood so the fact that it wasn't in dictionaries was irrelevant. You know there's a very similar example of a similar case in an Indiana Supreme Court case in 1865 where I knew the courts as you know the word fuck toldo in this case written with a few dashes other not to be found in any in any vocabulary the English language is as well understood as any other English word. And the last legal example I want to read because it's particularly nice is from a

1898 case a criminal case from from Texas where a murder occurred and the judge's instruction to the jury read it. You were instructed that if prior to the shooting of deceased by defendant the deceased called the defendant a motherfucking son of a bitch and the defendant shot and killed the deceased. Then you were instructed in this case that the defendant could not be guilty of a higher offense than manslaughter if guilty of anything. So once you call someone a motherfucking son of a bitch you can murder them. You know when someone calls you that you know you can murder them pretty much. Things go down a notch or two now. So in any case these are the kind of things we look for when we're trying to get a very good sense of how this word was used at the time. Let me stop with reading from the book for now and just talk a little bit about exactly what this is. I do spend a good amount of space an introduction talking about these issues about the taboo status history you know use in books and films and things. But the core of the book is in fact a dictionary it is a Historical

Dictionary of the word fuck. And what historical dictionary is is basically what the OED is it is a dictionary that for every sense of every word it doesn't just include a definition but includes quotations from literature showing exactly how something has been used so who's using it. The earliest example you can find which in this case is very important so we can see how things developed. The most recent example within reason and most most Fuck derivatives are still in use. Some of them some of them not so much but most things in fact we can find. Up to the present day and things like that so you know we know by studying this how the word was being used when different things developed for example for most of the many centuries that it was originally used for it was only a sexual term. The figurative senses really don't become common until quite recently I mean even let's say 20 years ago the earliest figurative sense anyone knew of was from the 1980s I think. Now we have a few others there is one from the late 18th century and

one from some in the 1900s. But really all of the figurative senses are much more recent. And by the way they are now overwhelming. So when people say that that fuck is a sexual term it really isn't I mean it originated that way of course but but it isn't used that way now if you go to a corpus you know go to you know. Will will balance a database of English and look for examples of fuck and see how many of them are sexual. Maybe one in the hundred will will be most of them are going to be things like fucking as an intensifier or fucked up or things like this. They are not going to be the sexual sense. So in particular when you have recent court cases where they say well this word is so offensive because it's a sexual term the ones that are use are never you know when Bono says this is fucking brilliant. You know there's not a sexual term may have originated that way that may be why people think it's dirty or offensive but it's not it's not a sexual term. But in any case being able to you know having a historical dictionary allows you to to see these things going to see when things

arose what was in use and what time you know the whole pattern of things. And it also gives you something interesting to read. You know definitions themselves wouldn't be too interesting but when you have all the examples that's a lot of fun. So you know there are a lot of examples in here in of the authors you know some authors you might expect a lot of examples from oh say Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson and David Mamet you know people use the word a lot. This is as Heather said when she introduced me this is the latest edition of the book this is the third edition. It first came out in 1905 in the second edition of 1909. This edition is literally twice the size of the second edition. There are about one hundred twenty new entries in it. About fifteen hundred additional quotations. And there's just a lot more to say for several reasons one is that taboos have been lessening even the last 10 years so there are more and more things being coined. Another thing is just that we have access now to all sorts of full text databases that allow you to search for things that you otherwise wouldn't have been able to

find. So this is an example in the first edition my publicist Random House mentions to me the word fuck break which she described as. When a woman takes time off work to try to have a baby to try to get pregnant this is called a fuck break. OK and I know I looked around as much as I could at the time I'd never heard it and I couldn't find a single other example so I didn't put it in but I mentioned it in the intro in the introduction as something that some of that was being left out. Now I found examples going back to the 1980s in the broad not in that exact sense in the broader sense an interruption in any activity taken to engage in sexual intercourse. So you know there's a full entry for that now so you know when you when you can search this deeply in things you know Google Books is especially great for this. You can you know find a lot more. So some of the new entries are the first of the new entries range from Art Falk to x x x x is a term referring to a well-known artistic person regarded as being very

pretentious. And. It was the first example by the way from Bret Easton Ellis and x x x x is a 1980s British term used as a euphemism for fucking the expression you know to give a fuck. And it stems from an advertising campaign for a Castlemaine x x x x lager were the Australian it's an Australian lager but it was a British campaign. Australians won't give a fuck or won't give an X X X X X for any other beer. Some of the other some of the other new entries are MILF. Popularized by American Pie but going back a few years before that frack from Battlestar Galactica You know the expression the F word itself which I discussed in the introduction previously but now I put it in. Fuck machine meaning a vigorous lover fucked meaning not copulated with and many others. I was up to the publication date I was running a blog where I had a new one of the new entries every day so if you look at my website you can find some of those there.

So I think I will stop my direct reading now and I will open the floor up to questions so if anyone has anything I will do my best to answer. Thank you. I'm sorry. Right. You can hear. You have an awesome guy with words through your leg. Well not really I mean it's up to the writer or you know depending on what they want to get across. I mean now you can use it pretty much anywhere like it's not it's not a big decision or something you have to fight with the publisher about to get in so you're perfectly welcome to use it if you want of it sort of thing you could you think your characters would say that's fine. One thing I did want to mention in that regard though is that I do include many euphemisms for fucking in the

book but only ones that are that are clearly a euphemism for fuck itself you know beginning with F or sounding like it or something like that. I don't include words that are that are used as synonyms for sexual intercourse and or cheat or victimize. So you know screw or lay or things like that are not in here. I'm only only actual derivatives or clear euphemisms for fuck itself. Question How long sorry. Well what happened was the question was How long did I think about writing this when I was in Random House we were on this major historical dictionary of slang that covered all slang and of course there was a lot on the F-word in this in this dictionary and I thought at one point well you know wouldn't be need to just take all the fucking trees out and publish them as a separate book I mean people would be interested will be a lot cheaper you know they don't have to look at all this other stuff.

But I thought well this is just too ridiculous and I can't actually you know go to my publisher and say hey what about this. You know I get laughed at so we were in an editorial meeting one day and it was this horrible meeting where everyone presented this extremely boring stuff and everyone was annoyed because we were clearly not you know going to come out of this meeting without a single additional book to publish so finally I said well what if I took all the f words you know out of out of the slang dictionary and you would publish them as a separate book. Everyone said that's a great idea oh you're brilliant you know let's do that sure so. Sorry. Well all of the fock words yes. And in the original edition I only I only did American ones only had ones that were taken taken from that book which I realized pretty quickly was silly for the second edition especially now I had things that are not American so things that are only used in Britain or Australia or in one case Canada are in this as well and I also made a very big effort to include quotations from from well from whatever country I could find them in. One of the things that you typically do

which is not good practice but that you typically do when you're making historical dictionary is that if there is a term from South Africa let's say you will include South African quotations for that term but you will never include a South African quotation from any other term that if this is something is in general use in World English you will include examples from only England or England in America. You won't include examples from Ireland or South Africa or Australia or Canada you just won't bother because it's not as important or whatever which is a bad practice you know if it's in use in around the world you should include examples from around the world so I did try to put in as many examples from wherever I could find them. There is no I don't have any specifically South African terms by the way in here but there are a number of things that are specifically Aussie Australian and some Irish things and one Canadian term. And YES YES

YES YES YES YES. How would that me how words like this or others are developed from sexual senses more broadly. I mean I traces as well as I can as I said earlier you do have almost exclusively literal examples for the first many hundred years and after that it opens up you know strong words can develop various I mean all words can develop other meanings and words of this sort especially. You can't necessarily point specifically to any factor which you know which would give rise to this but certainly the earlier figurative senses are ones that you could imagine stemming from sexual things where you know I think you have to cheat into victimizer to her

things like this or are ones that are predictable you could predict coming from a word meaning to have sex with. And again there are other there are parallels for this you know other sexual terms are used this way. I'm just trying to say fuck all is not well I think there are Australian examples of fuck all the earliest examples are all around World War One and I think there are Australian examples of that. Just as an aside by the way the Australians you know there is no earlier and as now we're often regarded as being great users of this word. And if you read the soldier's diaries memoirs from World War 1 they're constantly from English and American writers and they're constantly talking about how much the Australian soldiers cursed and how they learned all these things that they never heard before. You know it's not just a modern idea that they do this I mean at the time this was this was always discussed and in fact the earliest. There are various examples of printed examples of fucking things

like all these court cases that I discussed earlier. The earliest quote unquote literary example of fuck to be openly printed in America that I know about is from one thousand twenty six. From soldiers. A soldier's diary from World War 1 and apparently his publication didn't have any problem because the book went through 10 at least 10 printings and even in the tenth printing the word is still there or so I can't imagine there was any outcry. In any case even in this example he was explicitly quoting an Australian soldier. So you can actually talk a little bit about the history of the F word in dictionaries and as I mentioned before the earliest example we have in dictionaries from 59th which was given as an English synonym of an Italian word. The first time fuck appears as a head word in a dictionary was 671 where it appears in a well an English dictionary written in Latin However it was an atom

etymological dictionary of English but nonetheless written in Latin but of English so that was the first time fuck appeared as a head word. There were a few other examples throughout the seventeenth century 19th century Falk appearing in dictionaries. It was in Nathan Bailey's dictionary he was the immediate predecessor to Johnson used in his dictionary dictionary in Britannica 1730 which is a very large dictionary in a very good one although he gives it definition that it is a term used of a goat. Which is very odd and certainly not borne out by any actual evidence I can only assume that he included this no it's just to suggest that it was not as vulgar as it might be if you were term used to people that say it wasn't of course in Johnson but he made a conscious effort to keep out words like this. The last of the last modern dictionary to include it rather less the last pre-modern dictionary to include it was the 775 dictionary written by a Baptist preacher and the second

edition in 70 1795 had it. And after that there was a hundred seventy year gap where fuck did not appear in any general general dictionary. It wasn't things like Farmer Henley and gross and other will gross was a bit earlier. But other other slang dictionaries that were privately printed but. But the first time it appeared in a general dictionary was a British dictionary in 1965 when it was very badly and very briefly defined an entry for it had been drafted for Webster's Third. But when an executive happened to see the entry on the editor's desk he became outraged insisted that the word not appear and there was a great example from from Random House. The editor of the Random House Dictionary of English Language going to a dictionary in 1066 when that came out just Stein when he. Hold on let me read it because it's a great passage.

Which now I mean embarrassingly I'm not going to be able to find it. Oh yes sorry. In an interview with The New York Times I just as well without using the word of course he told about a meeting that he had convened with the company's editorial and sales staff to discuss the words contant fuck. He said when I utter the words this is again quoting the New York Times when I utter the words there was a shuffling of feet and a wave of embarrassment went through the room. That convinced me that the words do not belong in the dictionary though I am sure I'll be attacked as a prude for the decision. And in fact you do not have to wait long to be proven right on this point. Exactly two weeks later the times own book reviewer wrote Unfortunately a stupid prudery has prevented the inclusion of probably the most widely used word in the English language. The excuse you're no doubt is good taste but in a dictionary of this scope and ambition the mission seems

Damini responsible. So we're well read from the introduction of the OED then. The words constant fuck have been kept out of the OED entries were edited in the 1890s although by the time the editors made it to W. in the 1900s they did include the term wind fucker which was a name for the Kestrel which appears in it one example from from Ben Johnson I think the slang lexicographer Eric Partridge's reported discussion he had had with onions who is one of the editors of the OED about why the early editors why the earlier editors had left out these words and onion said they consider the two unspeakable sed to be also on principles and although I cannot speak for Craigie one of the editors I do myself think them beyond the pale of all decency. I would have liked my own children to find these words in a volume on my library shelves. Partridge said well you know people would never find the words they didn't already know to look for them. Come on you know the common objection and onions is said yes perhaps perhaps but I still think the OED was right

to ban them. And the fact the OED left him out has been objected to for a long time in 1034 the linguist. SEE Ross who's now best known for the concept of u and non-U language that Nancy Mitford popularized. He was reviewing the first 1933 supplement for the OED in a scholarly journal and went on at some length about how stupid it was. You know the perpetuation of a Victorian prudishness inacceptable infill ology beyond all other subjects so the words finally enter the OED in 1982 with the publication of the first volume of Robert Burchfield supplements to the OED. When he first accepted the editorship in 1907 Burchfield said The time has not yet come to include the word but eventually he changed his mind and after consulting a number of scholars around the globe and drafting entries for the words A Burchfield wrote to the delegates of Oxford University Press that the draft entries were based on a quote based on the printed evidence which though scanty in some centuries is substantial enough to permit the compilation of articles

comparable in quality with those for other words of similar date. So in 1968 the delegates as well as the proctors you know going to the very top the Proctors of the University of Oxford itself prove the inclusion of the two words in recognition that quote standards of tolerance are changed and their mission has for many years and more frequently of late. Excited critical comment. And so they went in due course in 1982. Well fuck wind was another one. Oh look who's right is mentioned yes although the good news. Well that's hard to imagine indeed although other problem is the you know the example of when Since we only have one we don't really know if it was common that is it it's possible that when Hoover was a

euphemism all along but it's also possible that the one of the examples we have is unrelated So we just it's possible it's possible that they did this one early example is unrelated. As you know with such a complete gap in evidence it's hard to hard to make any further judgement on it. It's a human. I don't have any hope so I don't know and I'm not entirely sure I have any idea the way that the way that offensive words have tended to evolve. I mean as we've seen this has been considered offensive since the very earliest example we have. Things that are considered offensive usually go in some kind of cycles and often treated the same way so in the 16th and 17th centuries terms for you know insulting one's parentage were extremely bad so you know horse on Shakespeare or bastard were very bad terms and these would often have been written in the same way that you know fuck or shit or other things were you would have dashes replacing the vowels or you know be dashed you know dashing

out the whole word you know religious blasphemy SO DAMN GOD DAMN were written the same way. And you know retains something of a stronger taboo even now U.S. has got a logical terms of started becoming less taboo in recent years from the last 40 years. With nothing nothing clearly taking their place I mean there are terms that have gotten much stronger in recent years especially any kind of racial or ethnic terms. So a word like nigger is now you know probably the most offensive word you could say you know it's a word that I. You know Dick Cheney used to fuck on the Senate floor when you told our political opponents who you know go fuck himself. And this elicited a great amount of discussion. But you know nothing nothing bad happened to him nothing was going to happen but if he hadn't he'd referred to an African-American politician as a nigger It would have been catastrophic Lee bad and of course these aren't parallel I mean in ethnic terms aren't going to replace sexual terms or you know or be used in any kind of general way but it does

show that that standards of pensiveness do change over time. I can only assume that that the word fuck will become increasingly acceptable over time although I think it's highly unlikely that it will ever shit all of it's all of it's taboo. In general I almost always say knowing part of the you know part of being a lexicographer is that you have to be dispassionate and treat everything and everything with us with the same respect. But there are things in here that are interesting or amusing or surprising and you know because I have previously acknowledged finding this an interesting one. And you know as with the world in general this does not convey approval on my part of the sentiment or whatever. But there is an expression which goes back at least to the 1950s of a sexually unappealing woman which is I wouldn't fuck her with his dick

so I'd have to nominate that I guess. I am not wildly profane. You know I use it in the expected context. Probably not overwhelmingly commonly but I don't shy away from it. I am mildly frustrated with myself when my children hear me say it but you know but I use it you know often enough not it not as much as people say What does your mother think. My mother uses it more than I do I would say. This was especially whilst driving. Well that's that's actually an extremely interesting question whether it's use over time

about whether the subject is male or male or female. The very earliest the earliest modern definition I mentioned other than 165 British dictionary specifically says it's only of a male. This isn't actually true and I did spend a lot of time trying to search for this. One of the things you find in dictionaries dictionary treatment of the word by the way is extremely bad because there are a lot of a lot of perfectly legitimate uses that are not allowed by most dictionaries I mean one of things I tried hard to do is defined as and making sure the OED covered it as well. Dictionaries typically treat will typically define fuck as something like you know to have sexual intercourse to have certain sexual intercourse with men if you look up sexual intercourse it will say something like. You know we refer to heterosexual genital intercourse. You know so meaning is that a fuck is defined that way for can only refer to heterosexual general intercourse. And even now that dictionaries do

acknowledge that sexual intercourse can refer to. Anal sex let's say. Still if you define fuck that way even if you make your definition of sexual intercourse relatively broad it doesn't cover the way that fuck is used. So most dictionaries nowadays you know you can't. You can't fuck your hand you can't fuck someone's mouth. You know you can't. There are all sorts of things that are that are used according to some dictionaries you can't fuck someone in the ass and so forth you know there are all sorts of things that are perfectly part a part of the word and have been in use for a very long time that are that are not allowed by by most dictionary treatment. And in any case yes it is. Certainly it is traditional for a very very long time that the word was almost always used with a male actor and there are two there are two elements One is whether Fuck You can only be used of the the active person and that is you know the penetrator means another has with it whether it can be used regardless that

is that is a woman can say you know I want to fuck him meaning I want to be penetrated by whatever I want to engage in sex with him but not you. Not that she wants to you know use a strap on let's say. And there are really there are reasonably early examples of this where you do have a woman you know being used either as the actor or in you know some sign of Pender penetrative role or saying saying that but it's relatively rare and even the OED does say you know especially in early use with a man you know of a man and it is still used this way today I mean I don't you know I do know people now who think that it's a little bit odd to use you know for you know to hear a woman say you know use it in a general term a general way. But but it is used that way. OK.

You know. Well thank you thank you very much for the material it's not me. Yes. No question Was there ever chance of the word would show up in the book title. No. There are some in fact is another thing I discussed in the introduction. If you would limit it too much I mean already people shy away from discussing it because of the contents. Especially in recent years the FCC has been cracking down harder so I've had a harder time setting up radio or TV interviews because people think that the word might come out. The New York Times doesn't like it even printing the phrase the F-word which is particularly ironic because it will until until very recently until a few months ago in fact when I was working on the entry The earliest example of the phrase the F word itself appeared in The New York Times in one thousand seventy two. I've since managed to find some earlier examples going back to an

1056 in a scholarly journal actually. But you know if they don't even want to print the F word that you know you print that you know saying fuck would be really devastatingly bad and of course you know there have been things as you know the book on bullshit in a recent novel THE FUCK UP. There are various things that have used it but usually these are things where it will either ring on bullshit was a chance bestseller and the fuck up was printed by a new artistic press and all that so. It was very unlikely as it is convincing officer university press to publish a book of this sort was something of a dodgy proposition. They would never gone for it if the title were something like Fuck M.. OK so me. OK well thank you very much for having her. Well let me just say right here.