Fuck is an English-language profanity that often refers to the act of sexual intercourse , but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to around There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as compounds that incorporate it, such as motherfucker and fuck off. It is unclear whether the word has always been considered a pejorative or, if not, when it first came to be used to describe often in an extremely angry, hostile, or belligerent manner unpleasant circumstances or people in an intentionally offensive way, such as in the term motherfucker , one of its more common usages in some parts of the English-speaking world.
Some English-speaking countries censor it on television and radio. Andrea Millwood Hargrave's study of the attitudes of the British public found that fuck was considered the third-most-severe profanity, and its derivative motherfucker second. Cunt was considered the most severe. Nevertheless, the word has increasingly become less of a pejorative and more publicly acceptable, an example of the " dysphemism treadmill " or semantic drift known as melioration, wherein former pejoratives become inoffensive and commonplace.
Journalists were advised to refrain from censoring the word but use it sparingly and only when its inclusion was essential to the story. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the ultimate etymology is uncertain, but that the word is "probably cognate" with a number of Germanic words with meanings involving striking, rubbing and having sex or is derivative of the Old French word that meant 'to have sex'. The word has probable cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German ficken 'to fuck' ; Dutch fokken 'to breed', 'to beget' ; Afrikaans fok 'to fuck' ; [ 8 ] Icelandic fokka 'to mess around', 'to rush' ; [ 9 ] dialectal Norwegian fukka 'to copulate' ; and dialectal Swedish focka 'to strike', 'to copulate' and fock ' penis '.
One reason that the word fuck is difficult to trace etymologically is that it was used far more extensively in common speech, rather than in easily traceable documents or writings. There exist multiple urban legends that advance false etymologies , including the word allegedly being an acronym.
One of these urban legends is that the word fuck originated in Irish law. A variant of this legend alleges church clerks to have recorded the crime of "Forbidden Use of Carnal Knowledge". Another legend places the origin on a royal permission allegedly granted during the Middle Ages. Due to the Black Death and the consequent scarcity of resources, villages and towns supposedly attempted to control population growth by requiring permission to engage in intercourse.
