The place-names Ric Wyndfuk and Ric Wyndfuck de Wodehous (which sounds like a brilliant place to live), both of which are found near Sherwood Forest in a document from 1287. However, this is generally assumed to mean ‘to strike’ and can be compared with the Anglo-Norman surname Butevilein meaning ‘to strike the churl or wretch’ (‘vilein’ being related to the English villain which originally meant a person of a lower status). Marc Morris posted this excellent photo on Twitter:
Disappointing.įuckebegger (1286/7) it appears as part of the surname of one of Edward I’s palfreymen. Since it was first written about no-one’s been able to find it and it’s generally assumed to be a mis-reading, perhaps of Tucker, or a variant on fulcher, meaning ‘soldier’. John Le Fucker (supposedly from 1278) – While excellent, this name is probably apocryphal. There are lots of instances of the word fuck from before the fifteenth century drifting around, some of the most notable of which are, chronologically: Perhaps there were more early written examples in Scottish simply because they were less prudish about writing it.
However, this is generally believed to be unlikely, in part because the Scottish weren’t considered influential enough for English to borrow words from them. The coded example might have been an early way around actually writing it.Īnother theory for its late arrival is that it’s a borrowing from Norse (the Vikings) via Scottish because several early instances are found in Scottish writing (such as the fifteenth-century one discounted in that other article). Īnother theory for why there’s hardly any written record of fuck before the fifteenth century is because, if it was around before then, it was just too darn rude to write down. If you wanted to talk about making whoopee in a dirty way, the Middle English word to use was swive. Anything that appears earlier is most likely to be the use of fuck to mean ‘to strike’. While ‘fuck’ existed in English before then it was never used to mean rogering, instead it typically meant ‘to strike’ (which was, way-back-when, related to the word that became fuck because it’s a kind of hitting…). Despite it commonly being classed as one of the Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, Jesse Sheidlower (author of an entire book on fuck, and past editor of the OED so he knows what he’s talking about) suspects that it came into English in the fifteenth century from something like Low German, Frisian or Dutch.
Instances of fuck before the fifteenth century are rare. So, for your enjoyment and workplace sniggering, here’s a potted history of fuck. I think the Brasenose fuck was considered the earliest in 1993, and that’s quite out-dated now. But even if we DO agree to discount those two little exceptions, it’s still not the earliest instance. Stop it right now.īut right now there’s a post going round with a lovely image of a manuscript from Brasenose College, Oxford, proudly declaring it’s the earliest instance of fuck in English (although, it notes, that is apart from that pesky one from Scotland and that one that says fuck but is written in code). So if you do believe any of that, stop it. As are all of the other nonsensical acronyms floating about (anything ending in Carnal Knowledge uses words which wouldn’t be used until AFTER the contents of this blog post). One origin story for fuck is that it comes from when sex was outlawed unless it was permitted explicitly by the king, so people who were legally banging had Fornication Under Consent of the King on their doors, or: F.U.C.K.
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