Saturday, March 03, 2007

The Origins of F U C K

Wandering about bookstores that carry a limited selection of English books, I often come across gems that Kino or Borders does not have in the 200,000+ titles on the shelves. I picked up a book Port Out, Starboard Home or POSH is a collection of facinating stories on the words we use.

Flipping through the pages I find this entry interesting and like to share with you. There several unauthorised versions:

* The origin was in fifteent century, when a married couple had to have permission from the
king to procreate. Hence, Fornication Under the Consent of the King
* During the time of the Puritans, a person imprisoned in the stocks would have his or her crime
displayed on the timebers. Because space is tight, when adultery is involved the acronym
FUCK which represented the words For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
* It originated from medical diagnostic notation relating to soldiers in the British Imperial Army
When a soldier reported sick and found to have VD, the abbreviation FUCK was stamped on
his documents, short for Found Under Carnal Knowledge

The real McCoy is fuck is a Germanic word related to middle Dutch fokken, Norwegian fukka and Swedish focka.

No comments: