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From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Subject: Re: Origin of four letter f-word

The status of this belief is, appropriately enough, "F."

"More of the Straight Dope" takes up this subject. If you'd like to get the etymology of f-u-fragmented-DNA-strands from a more conventionally respectable source than Uncle Cecil, try Eric Partridge, "Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English" (Greenwich House, 1958) for the etymology of f-u-fragmented-DNA-strands. As far as I know, all acronym-based hypotheses (Fornication Under Consent of the King, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, etc.) are considered spurious, though this has never stopped anything from being believed widely.

If you don't think it's a dirty word now, wait 'til you've read its origin.

There's apparently a new book out called something like "Maledicta" devoted to the nasty things people in various cultures say about each other. My favorite, gleaned from a review of it: "A curse on you, and may the curse be that you remain what you are."

--Joe "but does it discuss 'Curses! Broiled Again'?" Chew

From dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!tuegate.tue.nl!gem!gtoal Sun Nov 24 16:43:29 PST 1991 Article 28446 of alt.folklore.urban:
Path: dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!tuegate.tue.nl!gem!gtoal >From: gtoal@gem.stack.urc.tue.nl (Graham Toal)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Origin of four letter f-word
Message-ID: <2615@tuegate.tue.nl>
Date: 19 Nov 91 03:59:22 GMT
References: <3eWq02vm1bdW00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <leb.690505004@hypatia> Sender: news@tuegate.tue.nl
Reply-To: gtoal@stack.urc.tue.nl
Organization: MCGV Stack @ EUT, Eindhoven, the Netherlands Lines: 31

Someone (I forget who) wrote:
:>The origin of the word 'fuck' is: (Supposedly)
:> During the time of the pilgrams, when the stocks were a common form of
:>punsihment, the criminals crime would be written above the stocks. Instead
:>of writing Aldultery, they used the acronym For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
:>or F.U.C.K.

Again it goes round. Makes a change from 1920's US police I guess. I think you're confusing this with the other bogus folk-etymology, Fornication Under Consent of the King. OED says earliest written use 1503 by the way.

In article <leb.690505004@hypatia> leb@gsfc.nasa.gov (Lee E. Brotzman) writes: :If we look in the Oxford English Dictionary for the origin of 'fuck', we see
:that it has its root in the old Germanic from the verb "focken" (sp) meaning
:to poke or punch. At least that's the best I can remember from when I wrote
:a paper on the etymology of the verb "to fuck" for a freshman composition
:class back in 1978.

A better effort, but on yanking the old OED out we find the very first thing it says is that it is from the early modern English fuck or fuk, and explicitly says cannot be linked with German ficken (== the Dutch equiv)

:The dictionary is a marvelous resource for this kind of thing.

Hear hear. So is alt.usage.english, where questions of etymology are bread and butter, although recently there has been a trend towards suggesting that posters either buy a dictionary or at least try to look up someone else's first...

Why does no-one read any more?

From dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!darwin.sura.net!haven.umd.edu!mimsy!tms Sun Nov 24 16:56:17 PST 1991 Article 28496 of alt.folklore.urban:
Path: dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!darwin.sura.net!haven.umd.edu!mimsy!tms >From: tms@cs.umd.edu (Tom Swiss (spaceman spiff))
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Origin of four letter f-word
Message-ID: <43261@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 19 Nov 91 17:42:22 GMT
References: <3eWq02vm1bdW00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <W?BA*JD@csv.warwick.ac.uk> Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu
Organization: University of Maryland, Department of Magical Science Lines: 63

In article <W?BA*JD@csv.warwick.ac.uk> csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~) writes: >>The origin of the word 'fuck' is: (Supposedly)
>> During the time of the pilgrams, when the stocks were a common form of
>>punsihment, the criminals crime would be written above the stocks. Instead
>>of writing Aldultery, they used the acronym For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
>>or F.U.C.K.
>Sounds a bit ULish to me. My English teacher at school always told us that
>'fuck' was one of a large number of saxon roots that survive in modern
>English, others being 'hit', slap, kick etc. Don't know whether it's true
>or not, but it sounds plausible...

I picked this up a long time ago; still haven't removed some of the control sequences, sorry...

Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. Greenwich House (c) Eric Partridge MCMLVIII.

[4mfuck[m, verb hence noun, is a Standard English word classed, because of its associations, as a vulgarism. The derivative expletive [4mFuck[m ([4mit[m)[4m![m-derivative agent [4mfucker[m- and verbal noun and participial adjective [4mfucking[m, except when literal (then, they are likewise vulgarisms), belong to low slang. _Fuck_ shares with _cunt_ two distinctions: they are the only two Standard English words excluded from all general and etymological dictionaries since C18 and the only two Standard English words that, outside of medical and other official and semi-official reports and learned papers, still could not be printed in full anywhere within the British Commonwealth of Nations until late 1961.

That _fuck_ cannot descend straight from Latin _futuere_ (whence Old French-French _foutre_) is obvious; that the two words are related is equally obvious. That it cannot derive unaided from German _ficken_, to strike, (in popular speech) to copulate with, is clear; it is no less clear that the English and German words are cognates. 'To _fuck_' apparently combines the vocalism of f_u_tuere+the consonantism of fi_ck_en, which might derive from _*f"cken_ (only dubiously attested).

Now, Latin _futuere_ is formed similarly to Latin _battuere_, to strike, hence to copulate with a woman. With both, compare Irish _bot_, Manx _bwoid_, penis; _battuere_, says Malvezin, is borrowed from Celtic and stands for _*bactuere_; and _futuere_ recalls the Celtic root _*buc-_, a point, hence to pierce (malvezin); compare also Gaelic _batair_, a cudgeller, and Gaelic _buail_, English/Irish _bualaim_, I strike. Both Latin _battuere_ and Latin _futuere_ (compare Latin _fustis_, a staff, a cudgel: ? for _*futsis_) could have got into Latin from Celtic, which, it is perhaps worth adding, had originally no _f_: basic idea. 'to strike', hence (of a man) `to copulate with'. Nevertheless, the source probably long antedates both Latin and Celtic: a strikingly ancient etymology one is apparently afforded by Egyptian _petcha_, (of the male) to copulate with, the hieroglyph being an ideogram of unmistakably assertive virility. The Egyptian word has a close Arabic parallel.- A Mediterranean word?

[Words are _italicized_ when thus indicated] [Words preceded by * indicates presumed word, form of word, or sense] [f"ucken is fucken where u has umlaut]