The Word Between E and G

            My first exposure to the F-word was from my brother, Roy. I think I was fifteen, so that would have been 1965, and he would have been twenty-eight. I don’t remember the circumstances that made him angry, but the single F-word spit out sounded nasty. Perhaps it made an impression because he was furious. But what did it mean?

I was familiar with “shit” and “damn.” These were the curse words of choice in my childhood home. They were mostly employed by my mom who was often impatient and had a short fuse. My dad used both words but, at least around me, with less frequency and intensity.

            I tried looking up the new word in our old Webster’s Dictionary, following the standard advice given when I asked what something meant. The family dictionary had a worn red cover and was four or five inches thick. The pages were made with that fine Bible paper which seemed too delicate to last a family’s use for twenty years or so. There was a hint of gilt on the edges. The book had thumbnail cutouts on the edge of the page so one could directly turn to whatever alphabet section desired. I liked finding words in this tome. As a kid, I felt grown up and competent while exploring and successfully locating words.

Sometimes I’d find some little marks or notations in the margins made by my siblings or parents. I recognized Catherine’s lovely penmanship and Lee’s tortured script. I figured the little drawings here and there were Roy’s; they were somewhat mechanical looking. I felt a little jolt when I discovered I was following their fingertips. Going where some family members had been before gave me a feeling of connection with my brothers and sisters.

Except there was no following them to the F-Word. This time, I didn’t find the word for which I was looking. It was conspicuous for its absence.

Despite my curiosity at the time, I don’t remember making further inquiries. It didn’t feel like a question I could ask my parents. And as a sheltered Catholic girl attending an all-girls’ Catholic high school, I didn’t run into the word in that world. Not that it wasn’t used somewhere in those hallowed halls, I’m sure. There were some wild girls there.

Eventually, don’t know how, I learned at least the original meaning of the word, the one referring to sexual intercourse. Maybe I found it in a newer dictionary at school or the library? I have a feeling I had only a vague understanding at the time of what “sexual intercourse” meant. And since the definition had “sex” in it I sure didn’t want to ask a nun or my parents.

          Today, with the help of a search engine and the erudite Huffpost, I learned the word was first used in the early sixteenth century in a manuscript of the Latin orator Cicero. A little later in the century, in 1528, there was another reference to the word by a monk.

Here I include verbatim more information from the Huffpost article titled “A F*cking Short History of the F-Word” by Melissa Mohr: “An anonymous monk was reading through the monastery copy of De Officiis (a guide to moral conduct) when he felt compelled to express his anger at his abbot. "O d fuckin Abbot," he scrawled in the margin of the text. We can be sure when this was because he helpfully recorded the date in another comment--1528. It is difficult to know whether the annotator intended "fucking" to mean "having sex," as in "that guy is doing too much fucking for someone who is supposed to be celibate," or whether he used it as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay; if the latter, it anticipates the first recorded use by more than three hundred years. Either is possible, really--John Burton, the abbot in question, was a man of questionable monastic morals.”  I appreciate the lowly monk trying to learn what a moral life is to be for him and then recording his complaint.

According to the prestigious Oxford Languages, the word is “of Germanic origin (compare Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen ); possibly from an Indo-European root meaning ‘strike’, shared by Latin pugnus ‘fist’.” It was used at first to refer solely to sexual intercourse.

Again, the Huffpost: “Only in the early to mid-nineteenth century did it begin to be used non-literally, as most swear words are, to insult and offend others, to relieve pain, and to express extremes of emotion, negative and positive. In other words, it took roughly three hundred years to make the transition from "he fucked her" to "that's fucking awesome!"” Oh, the twists and turns of language…

I also learned that “fuck” wasn’t in our old family dictionary because it had been outlawed by the 1873 Comstock Act. The law banned anything considered obscene, which included the F-word. Because of that legislation the word did not appear in dictionaries until the later nineteen-sixties, when moral standards relaxed somewhat.

            But I never could say the word aloud. No matter the circumstances. Spill a pan of spaghetti on the floor? Break my favorite teacup? A speeding ticket?

“Darn!”

I never uttered the F-word until sometime around my mid-forties. By then I’d heard it enough times, in movies and the Ex’s occasional use, that the word had lost some of its taboo. I occasionally contemplated saying it just for the heck of it. Weird, I know.

            There just didn’t seem to be a situation that called for uttering it. Until one day, while the ex and I were examining some old house anomaly on the second floor, I said it, softly.

“What the fuck?”

The ex swung around, “WHAT did you say?”

“Fuck!” I said.

We both laughed as though it was the best joke ever, got all teary eyed from laughing so much. It was just so strange coming out of my mouth. As though I was suddenly telling a joke in an alien tongue and we had no trouble understanding it and the surprise made us laugh all the more.

I deployed it once in a great while after that, never in anger, and it always made us laugh. One of the few circumstances when we laughed at the same thing.

My Irish former son-in-law, James, applied the expletive once or twice while I was visiting Ireland. But his pronunciation was “fook” or “fookin’.” He said that the word, like “Jesus,” had multiple meanings depending on the situation and intonation; and you had to grow up Irish to be able to discern exact meaning behind each utterance.

That might be true of “Jesus,” but whether on the Emerald Isle or U.S. soil, “fuck” is now used in many ways with many permutations, and most people can discern the shades of meaning. However, using it in a text can be hazardous, since it lacks intonation.

The twenty-first century version of a dictionary, encyclopedia and more, the Internet, teems with helpful information, examples, and modern ways the F-word is used. The word is still banned over the radio waves, but is common in books, in the titles of books, streaming series, movies, jokes, t-shirts, and daily language. It can be used as gently as an intimate endearment, or in a harsh and vulgar slur. As James said, it all depends on the tone and circumstances.

“Fook and “fookin’” seem charming when compared with the harsh pronunciation in America. I’ve adopted the Irish way of saying the word.

The reason for this adolescent obsession with a cuss word at this moment is due to a Netflix drama, Dept. Q. It’s a mystery crime series set in Scotland. The main protagonist is Carl Morck, a brilliant investigator. He recently experienced a traumatic event at a “routine” murder site. He was shot in the neck, his partner was paralyzed, and another officer was killed.

He is still dealing with this when he returns from medical leave. One has the impression that even on a good day his self-control is questionable, and now he’s off the rails committing public and violent mistakes. Two episodes in one week hit the Edinburgh headlines.

Moira Jacobson​​, Carl's commanding officer and the first woman head of the police department, vigorously and loudly reprimands him in view and hearing of the other officers in the station. The glass wall of her office does little to quiet her castigation of Morck.  She copiously employs the F-word in a brilliant tirade.

I watched it four or five times. One must admire virtuosity.

Her pronunciation of the word is somewhere between the harsh American pronouncement and the softer Irish version. I’ve been saying “fook” and “fookin’” for fun frequently since I watched the series. Can we say I am easily influenced?

“Where did I leave my fookin’ glasses?”

“That fookin’ fool is going to fookin’ get us killed one fookin’ way or another!”

“Well fook, I’d better wash the fookin’ dishes.”

So adolescent! But fun. For me.

I’m sure this phase will pass shortly and any day now I will grow up.

And while Moira’s not the only one in the series who harnesses the power of the word, she wins the crown for the most uses in a short time. Even though she rails at Morck with verbal dexterity, intensity, and duration, with the volume turned up, somehow the F-word does not seem as vulgar or scary as when my brother spit it out it all those years ago.

A F*cking Short History of the F-Word | HuffPost Entertainment

the etymology of fuck - Google Search   (uses Oxford Languages)