A few weeks ago, the Linguistics hobbyist magazine, Silly Linguistics put out a feeler for anyone that might be interested in writing an article. I’ve been meaning to get something published, even if it isn’t tech related. You may or may not know, I have a degree in Linguistics (double majored with Political Science) from Central College in Pella, Iowa. So I wrote a little bit about an experience as a Linguistics undergrad. Here it is!
Back in my sophomore year of undergrad, at a small, liberal arts college in the middle of very conservative Iowa, I took a class on the History of the English Language. Historical and Social Linguistics were always my favorite parts of Linguistics. I appreciate the anthropological and, to an extent, the psychological aspects of human language more than memorizing the IPA and transcribing foreign languages.
In this course we were assigned a paper and a presentation. It was a fairly generic assignment for a subject I found so fascinating. So, I decided to spice it up a little. I was bound and determined to make this 8 AM presentation something that my classmates would remember well after we graduated. I emailed the professor for special permission to write my paper and presentation on the etymology of foul language. He responded back, hesitantly, that if it was treated professionally as an academic subject, it would be okay. I also had to give the presentation with a straight face.
While this was about 15 years ago, I still remember the conclusion of my studies. The only reason why foul language is considered foul language is because the gatekeepers of language had dirty minds.
Take the F-word, for instance. It is an incredibly useful and versatile word, as many internet memes have pointed out. But where did it come from? There are more hypotheses relating to the origin of this word than there are uses for it.
One interesting theory I found involved an Englishman name John le Fucker, who was charged with a double homicide in 1278. The theory has been widely challenged, as the F-word was not actually used in writing until much later.
A 15th century poem entitled Flen Flyys, or “Fleas and Flies” used the word “fuccant.” This was a hybrid word, containing an English word and a Latin conjugation. Therefore, the OED (online edition, at least), rejects this as the “first use” of the F-word in English, as it is an Anglo-Latin word, it’s not, strictly speaking, English.
The professor of my class, a rather strait-laced and conservative gentleman, surprised us all by adding, after my presentation was done, an amusing anecdote regarding the Frisian use of a similar word. Dr. Weber asked a Belgian exchange student what his family did.
“We f*** goats.”
“Excuse me?”
“We f*** goats. We’re goat f***ers. My father and his grandfather f***ed goats and now I love f***ing goats as well.”
My professor had to think about this for a second and finally understood what this poor, misunderstood student was saying. He was trying to use the Frisian verb fokke as a cognate with the English f-word. Fokke means “to breed livestock.”
While the origin of the F-word is not clearly understood, it’s useful. As Dr. Steven Pinker points out in his book The Stuff of Thought, the word doesn’t need to be a filthy word. There is no other concise word in English that means “to copulate with.” The only reason why it is considered foul is because American English is very puritanical. Sex needs to be censored, so we need to either dance around it or use overly clinical terms for it. F***. That.
I aced that presentation, by the way.
I never heard this story about your ppsper snd presentation. Interesting that we don’t use that word though as it was intended?
How is it intended? In contemporary Linguistics, the field of Lexicography, that is, the study of the MEANING of words, holds that a word can have multiple meanings over time, or at the same time. The reason why I find Linguistics fascinating is because language evolves so readily. That’s both a source of frustration and enjoyment among Linguists. As pointed out in my article, the word in question has a plethora of meanings, depending on context.
TL:DR: I have to respectfully reject the notion that there is a singular meaning to the F-word, arguing instead that there are many meanings.
Interesting! I remember my mom explaining this word to me as originally an acronym – I don’t remember it all, but it started with ‘fornication.’ Did you ever hear of anything like that in your research?
Hey Susie. You might be thinking of “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.” I did run across some thoughts about that, but since the article was limited to 2 pages, I left that one out.
There should be many scholarly articles available. In 1972 I took a course called Psychology of Language. The professor was detailed and eloquent. Often I took a cassette recorder to class, so I captured every word. She had four lectures about profanity, describing the several divisions, like religious cuss words, anatomical cuss words, and more. I don’t remember when the famous George Carlin speech was, but she mentioned a similar content, listing the various ways that f*** means entirely different things, depending on context and emotional emphasis. She was citing studies done in the 1960’s! Therefore a college lecture could include books written.
I’m sure there are linguistic studies across cultures. The Spanish, Dutch, English and Germans affected their respective colonies with language and the cuss words from these countries were brought into the respective indigenous cultures. Imagine that Spanish said a F*** word, equally multi functional, so the word spread all over South America. Linguists LOVE that sort of study, since the words are spreading like blazing fires on dry prairies.