An English historian has come across the word 'fuck' in a court case dating to the year 1310, making it the earliest known reference to the swear word. Paul Booth of Keele University spotted the name 'Roger Fuckebythenavele' in the Chester County Court Plea Rolls for December 8, 1310.
But "fuck" wasn't actually a swear-word back then. It was indecent, of course, but people only used it for the sexual act itself.
For the monk and his peers, 'damnation' was the real obscenity. By the 1700s, if the F-word was printed at all, it was always as f—k. The use of dashes and asterisks continued in newspapers until relatively recently. Euphemisms abound, from effing and jeffing to fecking.
Fuck isn't thought to have existed in English before the fifteenth century and possibly arrived later from German or Dutch. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary says it wasn't used until 1500.
Profanity wasn't just touted by Marines in the Pacific, however. The F-word became such a notable part of the G.I. vocabulary that British soldiers on the Western Front identified American soldiers of the 84th Infantry Division as friendlies due to their incessant swearing.
Lickorous glutton, freckled bittor, jobbernol goosecap, ninny lobcock. Believe it or not these bizarre terms of abuse were all common swear words in the seventeenth century.
The word “fart” has been recorded since the 13th century and comes from the Old English word “feortan,” making it the oldest swear word ever recorded. It has been used as a vulgar slang term for flatulence, and its usage has been recorded in various works of literature and poetry throughout history.
Floccinaucinihilipilification Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com.
The year 1310 would be a couple of centuries before a monk reportedly scrawled the word on a manuscript by Cicero, which has commonly been considered the first appearance of the F-word in English writings. Paul Booth says he has alerted the Oxford English Dictionary.
g-word (plural g-words) (euphemistic) The word gay.
T-word, a euphemism for tranny, a pejorative term for transgender individuals.
The F word was not used in our home in the 1950s or 1960s. Swearing was fairly common in blue-collar work environments and the military, which were exclusively male or nearly so.
Then in 1970, Robert Altman's comedy M*A*S*H became the first major studio film to use the f-word, a passing comment during a football scene.
It's Joe Pesci, who's said the F-word 272 times in his various movies. But check this out: 241 of those were from a single movie: “Casino”. Al Pacino is second, with 197, followed by Jason Mewes of Jay & Silent Bob fame and Jonah Hill with 183 apiece, Leonardo DiCaprio with 144, and Seth Rogen with 140.
Once we got to the '70s, F-bombs were everywhere on record. The shock value evaporated. We even started hearing it on the radio with songs like The Who's Who Are You all the way to The Tragically Hip's At the Hundredth Meridian to Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine.
The shortest word is a. Some might wonder about the word I since it consists of one letter, too. In sound, a is shorter because it is a monophthong (consists of one vowel), while I is a diphthong. Both do consist of one letter in the English writing system, and in most fonts I is the narrowest letter.
Cursing countries which swear the most - and the least
The French have 7.59% - or seven in every 100 people - using curse words online per year. A close second was Poland, with 7.31%. Further down the rankings are Australia, New Zealand and Spain.
A new survey shows that the "f-word," or as it's most commonly known, the "f-bomb," is used the most by Americans when it comes to cuss words, according to a new study by Wordtips, but there's other words that are used more others depending on where you live.
Coupled with the tantalizing but few Victorian examples of obscenities that have come down to us, it seems safe to say that by the 1860s, and perhaps even earlier, people in America and Britain were swearing much as they do today.
As a general rule, swear words originate from taboo subjects. This is pretty logical. The topic is off-limits, so the related words aren't meant to be spoken either. Certain topics are almost universally taboo — death, disease, excrement — you know, icky stuff.
When host Jimmy Fallon told Jackson that Hill is first on the list, The Banker star replied: “That's some bulls***.” Hill has used a total of 376 curse words in film history, followed by Leonardo DiCaprio who has cursed 361 times. Jackson came in third with 301 curses used throughout his career.