Theword starting with F

 

"Joanne Harris said she once lost a book contract because she used the F word," my husband is sitting at the table reading bits and pieces of things he thinks I would find interesting.

It makes me think of my own relationship with the word as a writer, like Harris, and as a person.

My mother was one of those people with extreme reactions to the word used in her presence. Border line heart attacks, gaspings, etc. My sins in her eyes were of equal weight: becoming a Democrat, eloping to a man she disliked, and using that word.

In an evil moment, while driving my Chaucer professor home, I stopped to see her. Normally, the F word fell from his lips almost in every sentence. Since I'd told him about my mother he restrained himself. Darn.

It always amazed me how four little letters could produce such reactions. If they were arranged KFCU (Kentucky Fried Cicken University???) no one would think a thing about it. Personally, I almost never use it. Constant repetition dilutes it's meaning, but if I shout it every couple of years, people know the depth of emotion that I'm expressing.

So, I did some research and here's what I found.

Despite 5000+ English words starting with the letter between the D and G, it is the only one that bears the title "word."

There are various theories of its origin.

• German: Fricken to strike
• Swedish Focka to strike or aha...to copulate
• Icelandic Fokka  to mess around with 
• Italian fottere To have sex 
• Names from the 13th century on such as Fucker, Fuckebegger, Fuckkebotere

Why and how it carried such weight makes little sense, but it was banned in print in the British Obscene Publications Act of 1857. That does not mean that it wasn't part of the daily language of some only it was never in print, including dictionaries.

People can be clever and rework the word in Fork, Frig, Flip and Eff.  

Grammatically, it can be use a transitive and intransitive verb. It has shown up as an adjective, adverb, and interjection. 

Variations did appear in the 14th century in a work satirizing the Carmelite Friars and again in the 16th century in a poem by William Dunbar. Again in the 16th century, it showed up in an Italian-English dictionary as a definition of fottere.

I doubt if the acceptance of the word in polite company has been increased by the U.S. Supreme Court decision that the word is protected by the 1st and 14th amendments.  

Writers such as D.H. Lawrence used it in Lady Chatterley's Lover and J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Maybe Harris should have pointed that out to the publisher.