Fuck

Fuck is a profane English-language word[1]

which often refers to the act of sexual
intercourse but is also commonly used as
an intensifier or to denote disdain. While
its origin is obscure, it is usually
considered to be first attested to around
1475. In modern usage, the term fuck and
its derivatives (such as fucker and fucking)
can be used as a noun, a verb, an
adjective, an interjection or an adverb.
There are many common phrases that
employ the word as well as compounds
that incorporate it, such as motherfucker,
fuckwit, fuckup, fucknut and fuck off.

A protester's sign with the word fucking used for

emphasis

Offensiveness
The word is considered obscene but is
commonly used in many informal and
familiar situations.
It is unclear whether the word has always
been considered vulgar 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
2000 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.[2]
Nevertheless, the word has become
increasingly less vulgar and more publicly
acceptable, an example of the
"dysphemism treadmill", wherein former
vulgarities become inoffensive and
commonplace.[3][4] According to linguist
Pamela Hobbs, "notwithstanding its
increasing public use, enduring cultural
models that inform our beliefs about the
nature of sexuality and sexual acts
preserve its status as a vile utterance that
continues to inspire moral outrage." Hobbs
considers users rather than usage of the
word and sub-divides users into 'non-
users', for whom "the word belongs to a
set of taboo words, the very utterance of
which constitutes an affront, and any use
of the word, regardless of its form (verb,
adjective, adverb, etc.) or meaning (literal
or metaphorical) evokes the core sexual
meanings and associated sexual imagery
that motivate the taboo.", and 'users' for
whom "metaphorical uses of the word fuck
no more evoke images of sexual
intercourse than a ten-year-old's 'My
mom'll kill me if she finds out' evokes
images of murder," so that the "criteria of
taboo are missing."[5]

Because of its increasing usage in the

public forum, in 2005 the word was
included for the first time as one of three
vulgarities in The Canadian Press's
Canadian Press Caps and Spelling guide.
Journalists were advised to refrain from
censoring the word but use it sparingly
and only when its inclusion was essential
to the story.[6]

Etymology
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".[7]
Germanic cognates

The word has probable cognates in other

Germanic languages, such as German
ficken (to fuck); Dutch fokken (to breed, to
beget); dialectal Norwegian fukka (to
copulate), and dialectal Swedish focka (to
strike, to copulate) and fock (penis).[7] This
points to a possible etymology where
Common Germanic fuk- comes from an
Indo-European root meaning "to strike",
cognate with non-Germanic words such as
Latin pugno "I fight" or pugnus "fist".[7] By
application of Grimm's law, this
hypothetical root has the form *pug–.
There is a theory that fuck is most likely
derived from Flemish, German, or Dutch
roots, and is probably not derived from an
Old English root.[8]

False etymologies

One reason that the word fuck is so hard

to trace etymologically is that it was used
far more extensively in common speech
than in easily traceable written forms.
Several urban legends advance false
etymologies that declare the word to be an
acronym. One of these urban legends is
that the word fuck came from Irish law. If a
couple was caught committing adultery,
the two would be punished "For Unlawful
Carnal Knowledge In the Nude", with
"FUCKIN" written on the stocks above to
denote the crime. A variant myth alleges
church clerks to have recorded the crime
of "Forbidden Use of Carnal Knowledge".
Yet another is that of a royal permission
granted in the Middle Ages: the Black
Death and the scarcity of uncontaminated
resources drove towns to control both
human interactions and population
growth. Supposedly many towns required
permission to intermingle or to make
babies. Hence, no couple could do either
without royal permission (usually from a
local magistrate or lord) which required
placing a sign visible from the road that
said "Fornicating Under Consent of King",
which was later shortened to "FUCK". This
story is hard to document, has persisted in
oral and literary traditions for many years,
but has been proven false.[9]

A false etymology first made popular on

the radio show Car Talk says that the
phrase "fuck you" derives from "pluck yew"
in connection with a myth regarding the V
sign. This myth states that English archers
believed that those who were captured by
the French had their index and middle
fingers cut off so that they could no longer
operate their longbows, and that the V sign
was used by uncaptured and victorious
archers in a display of defiance against the
French. The addition of the phrase "fuck
you" to the myth came when it was
claimed that the English yelled that they
could still "pluck yew", (yew wood being
the preferred material for longbows at the
time), a phrase that evolved into the
modern "fuck you".[8] In any event, the
word fuck has been in use far too long for
some of these supposed origins to be
possible. Since no such acronym was ever
recorded before the 1960s according to
the lexicographical work The F-Word, such
claims create at best a so-called
"backronym".
Grammar
Fuck has a very flexible role in English
grammar, including use as both a transitive
and intransitive verb, and as an adjective,
adverb, and noun.[10] It can also be used as
an interjection and a grammatical
ejaculation. Linguist Geoffrey Hughes
found eight distinct usages for English
curse words, and fuck can apply to each.
For example, it fits in the "curse" sense
("fuck you!") as well as the "personal"
sense ("You fucker"). Its vulgarity also
contributes to its mostly figurative sense,
though the word itself is used in its literal
sense to refer to sexual intercourse, its
most common usage is figurative—to
indicate the speaker's strong sentiment
and to offend or shock the listener.[11]

Early usage
In 2015, Dr. Paul Booth argued he had
found "(possibly) the earliest known use of
the word 'fuck' that clearly has a sexual
connotation": in English court records of
1310–11, a man local to Chester is
referred to as "Roger Fuckebythenavele",
probably a nickname. "Either this refers to
an inexperienced copulator, referring to
someone trying to have sex with the navel,
or it's a rather extravagant explanation for
a dimwit, someone so stupid they think
that this is the way to have sex", says
Booth.[12][13][14][15] An earlier name, that of
John le Fucker recorded in 1278, has been
the subject of debate, but is thought by
many philologists to have had some
separate and non-sexual origin.[16]

Otherwise, the usually accepted first

known occurrence of the word is found in
code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and
English composed in the 15th century.[8]
The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite
friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title,
"Flen flyys", from the first words of its
opening line, Flen, flyys, and freris ("Fleas,
flies, and friars"). The line that contains
fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov
xxkxzt pg ifmk. Deciphering the phrase
"gxddbou xxkxzt pg ifmk", here by replacing
each letter by the previous letter in
alphabetical order, as the English alphabet
was then, yields the macaronic non sunt in
coeli, quia fuccant vvivys of heli, which
translated means, "They are not in heaven,
because they fuck the women of Ely".[17]
The phrase was probably encoded
because it accused monks of breaking
their vows of celibacy;[8] it is uncertain to
what extent the word fuck was considered
acceptable at the time. The stem of
fuccant is an English word used as Latin:
English medieval Latin has many
examples of writers using English words
when they did not know the Latin word:
"workmannus" is an example. In the Middle
English of this poem, the term wife was
still used generically for "woman".[18]

William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of

Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his
feiris he wald haue fukkit: / Ye brek my
hairt, my bony ane" (ll. 13–14).

The oldest occurrence of the word in

adjectival form (which implies use of the
verb) in English comes from the margins
of a 1528 manuscript copy of Cicero's De
Officiis. A monk had scrawled in the
margin notes, "fuckin Abbot". Whether the
monk meant the word literally, to accuse
this abbott of "questionable monastic
morals", or whether he used it "as an
intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay"
is unclear.[19]

John Florio's 1598 Italian–English

dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes, included
the term, along with several now-archaic,
but then-vulgar synonyms, in this
definition:

Fottere: To jape, to sard, to fucke, to

swive, to occupy.[20]
Of these, "occupy" and "jape" still survive
as verbs, though with less profane
meanings, while "sard" was a descendant
of the Anglo-Saxon verb seordan (or
seorðan, ON serða), to copulate; and
"swive" had derived from earlier swīfan, to
revolve i.e. to swivel (compare modern-day
"screw"). As late as the 18th century, the
verb occupy was seldom used in print
because it carried sexual overtones.[21][22]

A 1790 poem by St. George Tucker has a

father upset with his bookish son say "I'd
not give [a fuck] for all you've read".
Originally printed as "I'd not give ------ for all
you've read", scholars agree that the words
"a fuck" were removed, making the poem
the first recorded instance of the now-
common phrase "I don't give a fuck".[23]

Farmer and Henley's 1893 dictionary of

slang notes both the adverbial and
adjectival forms of fuck as similar to but
"more violent" than bloody and indicating
extreme insult, respectively.[11]

Rise of modern usage

Though it appeared in English
lexicographer John Ash's 1775 A New and
Complete Dictionary, listed as "low" and
"vulgar", and appearing with several
definitions,[24] fuck did not appear in any
widely consulted dictionary of the English
language from 1795 to 1965. Its first
appearance in the Oxford English
Dictionary (along with the word cunt) was
in 1972.[25]

The variant feck appeared in the English

Dialect Dictionary, compiled by Joseph
Wright in 1900.[26]

Modern usage
This section needs additional citations for
verification.

The modern usage and flexibility of fuck

was established by the mid-to-late 19th
century, and has been fairly stable
since.[11] Most literally, to fuck is to have
sex, but it is also used as a more general
expletive or intensifier.

Insertion of the trochaic word fucking can

also be used as an exercise for diagnosing
the cadence of an English-language word.
This is the use of fuck or more specifically
fucking as an infix, or more properly, a
tmesis (see expletive infixation). For
example, the word in-fucking-credible
sounds acceptable to the English ear, and
is in fairly common use, while *incred-
fucking-ible would sound very clumsy
(though, depending on the context, this
might be perceived as a humorous
improvisation of the word). Abso-fucking-
lutely and motherfucking are also common
uses of fuck as an affix. While neither
dysphemistic nor connected to the sexual
connotations of the word, even the
vacuous usages are considered offensive
and gratuitous, and censored in some
media; for example, "None of your fucking
business!" or "Shut the fuck up!" A
common insult is "Get fucked", which in a
less-offensive context would translate as
"get stuffed". The word is one of the few
that has colloquial usage as a verb,
adverb, adjective, conjunction, interjection,
noun, and pronoun.
"WTF?" spray painted on the rear of a Sherman tank
left over from U.S. military shelling practice on
Flamenco Beach on the island of Culebra, Puerto Rico

The word fuck is a component of many

acronyms, some of which—like SNAFU and
FUBAR—date as far back as World War II.
MILF and variations of the first letter are
widely seen in pornographic contexts.
Many more recent coinages, such as the
shorthand "WTF?" for "what the fuck?",
"STFU" for "shut the fuck up", or "FML" for
"fuck my life", have been widely extant on
the Internet, and may count as examples
of internet memes. Many acronyms will
also have an "F" or "MF" added to increase
emphasis; for example, "OMG" ("oh my
God") becomes "OMFG" ("oh my fucking
God"). Abbreviated versions of the word do
not tend to be considered offensive.
Although the word is proclaimed vulgar,
several comedians rely on fuck for
comedic routines. George Carlin created
several literary works based upon the
word. Other comedians who use or have
used the word consistently in their
routines include Billy Connolly, Denis
Leary, Lewis Black, Andrew Dice Clay,
Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy
and Sam Kinison.

Examples of more recent usage

In 1928, English writer D. H. Lawrence's

novel Lady Chatterley's Lover gained
notoriety for its frequent use of the words
fuck, fucked, and fucking.[27]

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

featured the use of fuck you in print. First
published in the United States in 1951, the
novel remains controversial to this day due
in part to its use of the word, standing at
number 13 for the most banned books
from 1990 to 2000 according to the
American Library Association.[28]

The first documented use of the word fuck

on live British television has been
attributed to theatre critic Kenneth Tynan
in 1965, though it has been claimed Irish
playwright Brendan Behan used the word
on Panorama in 1956 or the man who
painted the railings on Stranmillis
Embankment alongside the River Lagan in
Belfast, who in 1959 told Ulster TV's
teatime magazine programme Roundabout
that his job was "fucking boring".[29]
Controversy ensued in 1976 when Today
host Bill Grundy interviewed the Sex
Pistols, after guitarist Steve Jones called
Grundy a "dirty fucker" and a "fucking
rotter"[30] (see EMI and the Grundy
incident).

The word began to break into cinema

when it was uttered once in the film Vapor
(1963) and in two Andy Warhol films –
Poor Little Rich Girl (1965) and My Hustler
(1965),[31] and later in each of two 1967
British releases, Ulysses and I'll Never
Forget What's'isname. It was used several
times in the 1969 British film Bronco
Bullfrog.[32] According to director Robert
Altman, the first time the word "fuck" was
used in a major American studio film was
in 1970's M*A*S*H, spoken by Painless
during the football match at the end of the
film.[33]

Use in politics

Fuck is not widely used in politics, and the

use of the word by politicians often
produces controversy. Some events
include:

In 1965, U.S. President Lyndon B.

Johnson said to the Greek ambassador
Alexandros Matsas when he objected to
American plans in Cyprus, "Fuck your
parliament and your constitution.
America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea.
Greece is a flea. If these two fellows
continue itching the elephant they may
just get whacked by the elephant's trunk,
whacked good".[34][35]
Former British Secretary of State for
Defence Denis Healey reported that the
penultimate High Commissioner of
Aden (1965–67), Sir Richard Turnbull,
stated that, "When the British Empire
finally sinks beneath the waves of
history, it will leave behind it only two
memorials: one is the game of
Association Football and the other is the
expression 'Fuck Off'."[36]
During the 1968 Democratic National
Convention, Chicago mayor Richard
Daley became so enraged by a speech
from Abraham A. Ribicoff that he
shouted, "Fuck you!"[37] Daley would later
say that he was shouting "you fink, you"
and calling Ribicoff a "faker".[38] On the
first night of this same convention,
which was President Johnson's birthday,
a huge crowd of thousands of yippies,
hippies and anti-Vietnam war protesters
was famously filmed while
simultaneously roaring "Fuck you,
Lyndon Johnson!"[39][40][41]
During debate in February 1971 in the
House of Commons of Canada,
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
mouthed the words "fuck off" at
Conservative MP John Lundrigan, while
Lundrigan made some comments about
unemployment. Afterward, when asked
by a television reporter what he had
been thinking, Trudeau famously replied:
"What is the nature of your thoughts,
gentlemen, when you say 'fuddle duddle'
or something like that?". "Fuddle duddle"
consequently became a catchphrase in
Canadian media associated with
Trudeau.[42]
The first accepted modern use in the
British House of Commons came in
1982 when Reg Race, Labour MP for
Wood Green, referred to adverts placed
in local newsagents by prostitutes which
read "Phone them and fuck them."
Hansard, the full record of debates,
printed "F*** them", but even this
euphemism was deprecated by the
Speaker, George Thomas.[43]
Shortly after Tony Blair was elected
Leader of the Labour Party, the then
Labour MP George Galloway told a
public meeting "I don't give a fuck what
Tony Blair thinks" when questioned
about the party's move to the right.[44]
In late 2003, the then-U.S. presidential
candidate Senator John Kerry used the
word fuck in an interview with Rolling
Stone. Referring to his vote in favor of
the resolution authorizing U.S. President
George W. Bush to use military force in
Iraq, Kerry stated, "I voted for what I
thought was best for the country. Did I
expect Howard Dean to go off to the left
and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure.
Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as
badly as he did? I don't think anybody
did."[45]
In June 2004, U.S. Vice President Dick
Cheney told Democratic senator Patrick
Leahy, "Go fuck yourself." Coincidentally,
Cheney's outburst occurred on the same
day that the Defense of Decency Act
was passed in the Senate.[46]
In February 2006, Premier of the
Australian state of New South Wales
Morris Iemma, while awaiting the start
of a Council of Australian Governments
media conference in Canberra, was
chatting to Victorian Premier Steve
Bracks. Not realizing microphones were
recording, he said, "Today? This fuckwit
who's the new CEO of the Cross City
Tunnel has ... been saying what
controversy? There is no controversy."[47]
The exchange referred to the newly
appointed CEO of the recently opened
Cross City Tunnel toll road within
Sydney.
On January 31, 2007, New York
Governor Eliot Spitzer angrily retorted to
Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco,
"Listen, I'm a fucking steamroller, and I'll
roll over you and anybody else."
According to The New York Post, Spitzer
confirmed the exchange the following
day.[48]
In 2007, U.S. Senator John Cornyn
objected to John McCain's perceived
intrusion upon a Senate meeting on
immigration, saying, "Wait a second
here. I've been sitting in here for all of
these negotiations and you just
parachute in here on the last day. You're
out of line." McCain, known for his short
temper,[49] replied, "Fuck you! I know
more about this than anyone else in the
room."[50][51]
In April 2007, New Zealand Education
Minister Steve Maharey said "fuck you"
to a fellow MP during parliamentary
question time.[52] He apologized shortly
afterwards.
In December 2008, recorded telephone
conversations revealed Illinois Governor
Rod Blagojevich trying to "sell" an
appointment to the Senate seat that
Barack Obama resigned after being
elected president. In the phone
conversation, Blagojevich said in
reference to his power to appoint a new
senator, "I've got this thing and it's
fucking golden and I'm just not giving it
up for fuckin' nothing." In the recorded
conversations, Blagojevich also referred
to Obama as a "motherfucker" and
repeatedly said, "fuck him". When
speaking of the Obama administration's
request that Valerie Jarrett be appointed
as Obama's replacement, Blagojevich
complained, "They're not willing to give
me anything except appreciation. Fuck
them." Blagojevich also said Tribune
Company ownership should be told to
"fire those fuckers" in reference to
Chicago Tribune editors critical of
him.[53]
In December 2009 in Dáil Éireann (the
lower house of the Irish Parliament),
Paul Gogarty responded to heckles from
Emmet Stagg with the outburst, "With all
due respect, in the most
unparliamentary language, fuck you,
Deputy Stagg. Fuck you."[54][55] Gogarty
immediately withdrew the remarks and
later made a personal statement of
apology.[54] Reporting of the outburst
quickly spread by media and the
Internet.[55] A subcommittee of the Dáil's
standing committee on procedure and
privilege produced a 28-page report on
the incident.[54] Aengus Ó Snodaigh said
"fuck-all" in November 2009 and
apologised in Irish;[56] he said "fucked
up" in 2010.[57] Mick Wallace said "fuck
up" in May 2016[58] and the adjective
"fucking" in July 2016[59] and 2019.[60]
On March 23, 2010, U.S. Vice President
Joe Biden whispered into President
Barack Obama's ear, "This is a big
fucking deal" when referring to the U.S.
health care reform bill. His words were
picked up by microphones and video.[61]
On May 3, 2010, Canadian senator
Nancy Ruth advised representatives of
women's groups to "shut the fuck up" on
access to abortion, in the run-up to the
36th G8 summit.[62]
In late 2012, the then-U.S. House
Speaker John Boehner was visiting the
White House, where he saw then Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid in the lobby.
Boehner was under great stress about
the impending fiscal cliff, and Reid had
also accused him of running a
"dictatorship" in the house. Boehner saw
Harry Reid, pointed his finger at him, and
told him, "Go fuck yourself!" Reid replied
by saying, "What are you talking about?"
Boehner then repeated what he had told
him and left.[63]
On October 19, 2016, Senator Lindsey
Graham uttered the phrase: "Trump is a
[expletive] idiot. He’s unable to provide a
coherent answer" while reading a quote
during the testimony of Attorney General
William Barr on live television.[64]
In late 2016, Philippine President
Rodrigo Duterte reacted to the European
Parliament's criticism over the
prevalence of unsolved extrajudicial
killings incurred in his "War on Drugs"
which he lashed out at EU politicians,
singling out those from Britain and
France, calling them "hypocrites" and
accusing them of being responsible for
the deaths of thousands caused by their
ancestors during the colonial period.[65]
Upon making an obscene hand gesture,
Duterte stated that he told EU
politicians, "When I read the EU
condemnation I told them 'fuck you.' You
are only doing it to atone for your own
sins" and "They do not want a safe
Philippines. They want it to be ruled by
criminals. Oh, well, I'm sorry. That is your
idiotic view".[66] Duterte also said, in
response to growing international
criticism, the "EU now has the gall to
condemn me. I repeat it, fuck you."[67]
On June 10, 2018, Robert De Niro
sparked controversy during the 72nd
Tony Awards as he cursed U.S.
President Donald Trump with the word
during the live broadcast. He started
with the sentence: "I'm gonna say one
thing: Fuck Trump." He clenched his two
fists in the air, and ended his remarks by
saying "It's no longer down with Trump,
it's fuck Trump!" He received a standing
ovation from the audience, which was
mostly celebrities.[68][69][70]
On August 5, 2019, Beto O'Rourke after
learning of a mass shooting in his home
town of El Paso, Texas stated "He's been
calling Mexican immigrants rapists and
 criminals. I don't know, like, members of
the press, what the fuck?" referring to
Donald Trump when asked for his
reaction to the shooting.[71]
During a virtual live telecast Senate
hearing on August 21, 2020, Senator
Tom Carper shouted: "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
over a video chat that was being
broadcast nationwide.[72]

During the George W. Bush presidency a

vehicular bumper sticker with the words
Buck Fush gained some popularity in the
US.[73]

Use in marketing
In April 1997, clothing retailer French
Connection began branding their clothes
"fcuk" (usually written in lowercase),
stating it was an acronym for "French
Connection United Kingdom". Its similarity
to the word "fuck" caused controversy.[74]
French Connection produced a range of T-
shirts with messages such as "fcuk this",
"hot as fcuk", "mile high fcuk", "fcuk me",
etc.

In 2009, the European Union's OHIM trade

marks agency disallowed a German
brewery to market a beer called "Fucking
Hell". They sued, and on 26 March 2010
got permission to market the beer. They
argued it is actually named after the
Austrian village of Fucking and the
German term for light beer, hell (which is
simply the word for "light in colour").[75]

Iancu v. Brunetti is a United States

Supreme Court case in which the owner of
the clothing brand FUCT (supposedly
standing for "Friends U Can't Trust") sued
the Patent and Trademark Office, which
refused to trademark the name for being
"scandalous" under the Lanham Act.[76]
The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a
provision in 15 U.S.C. § 1052(a) of the
Act, denying registration to any trademarks
seen as consisting of immoral or
scandalous matter, was an
unconstitutional restriction of applicants'
freedom of speech.[77]

Band names

The word "fuck" has been used in a

number of band names, generally based
on common compounds. Although most
of these bands are in the aggressive, non-
mainstream genres of punk and metal,
others fall into the categories of more
accessible forms of electronic rock and
pop.[78]

Holy fuck
"Holy fuck" is an example of 'liturgical
profanity' used interjectionally to express
anger, contempt, disgust, or amazement.
Usually vulgar.[79]

F-bomb

The term "dropping an F-bomb" usually

refers to the unanticipated use of the word
"fuck" in an unexpected setting, such as
public media, a play on the nickname for
the hydrogen bomb (the "H-bomb") and the
shock value that using the word "fuck" in
discourse carries. The term was first
reported in a newspaper (Newsday) in
1988 when Hall of Fame baseball catcher
Gary Carter used it.[80] In 2012 it was
listed, for the first time, in the mainstream
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.[81]

Censorship
In the United States, the word is frequently
edited out of music and films when
broadcast on TV, such as in the film The
Big Lebowski, when John Goodman's
character repeatedly yells, "This is what
happens when you fuck a stranger in the
ass". It was censored on television as
"This is what happens when you find a
stranger in the Alps."[82]
Still, in 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court
decided that the public display of fuck is
protected under the First and Fourteenth
amendments and cannot be made a
criminal offense. In 1968, Paul Robert
Cohen had been convicted of disturbing
the peace for wearing a jacket with a
slogan titled "Fuck the Draft" (in a
reference to conscription in the Vietnam
War). The conviction was upheld by the
court of appeals and overturned by the
Supreme Court in Cohen v. California.

Common alternatives
In conversation or writing, reference to or
use of the word fuck may be replaced by
any of many alternative words or phrases,
including "the F-word" or "the F-bomb" (a
play on "A-bomb" and "H-bomb"), or simply,
eff or f (as in "What the eff" or "You effing
fool", "What the F" or "You f'ing fool"). Also,
there are many commonly used
substitutes, such as flipping, frigging,
fricking, freaking, feck, fudge, flaming,
forget or any of a number of similar-
sounding nonsense words. In print, there
are alternatives such as, "F***", "F––k",
etc.; or a string of non-alphanumeric
characters, for example, "@$#*%!" and
similar (especially favored in comic
books).

A replacement word used mainly on the

Internet is "fsck", derived from the name of
the Unix file system checking utility.[83] In
Battlestar Galactica the bowdlerized form
'frack' (spelt 'f-r-a-k' in the reimagined 2003
version) was used as a substitute for fuck.
The word was sometimes jokingly used as
a curse by fans.[84] Similarly, the word
"frell" is used as a substitute on the TV
show Farscape, and Dr. Elliot Reid (played
by Sarah Chalke) has frequently used the
substitute "frick" on the TV show Scrubs.
Stu Braudy, a recurring character on Curb
Your Enthusiasm played by Don Stark, is
teased by Larry David for constantly using
the substitute "freak" ("Ahh, freak you!").

See also
Army creole
Bleep censor
Censorship
The finger, a related hand gesture
Fit in or fuck off
Four-letter word
Fuck (film), documentary film about the
word
Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our
First Amendment Liberties
Fucking, Austria
Harcourt interpolation
List of films that most frequently use the
word "fuck"
Madonna on Late Show with David
Letterman
Profanity
Profanity in American Sign
Language
Profanity in science fiction
Seven dirty words
Sexual slang
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Further reading
Fairman, Christopher M. (2009). Fuck: Word
Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment
Liberties. Sphinx Publishing.
ISBN 1572487119.
Hargrave, Andrea Millwood (2000). Delete
Expletives? . London: Advertising Standards
Authority, British Broadcasting Corporation,
Broadcasting Standards Commission,
Independent Television Commission.
Sheidlower, Jesse (1999). The F Word.
Random House. ISBN 0-375-70634-8.
Presents hundreds of uses of fuck and
related words.
Michael Swan, Practical English Usage,
Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-19-
431198-8.
Wayland Young, Eros Denied: Sex in Western
Society. Grove Press/Zebra Books, New York
1964.
Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A
Study of the Transformations and
Symbolisms of the Libido. Moffat, Yard and
Company, New York 1916. Translated by
Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D., Neurological Dept.
of Cornell University Medical School and of
the New York Post Graduate Medical School.
Richard Dooling, Blue Streak: Swearing, Free
Speech & Sexual Harassment, (1996) ISBN 0-
679-44471-8. Chapters on famous swear
words, including the f-word, and the laws
pertaining to their use.
 Fuck – documentary film by Steve Anderson
(ThinkFilm 2005)

External links

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"Online Etymology Dictionary." Some
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 Fuck , academic paper exploring the
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Christopher M. Fairman, Ohio State
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Law March 2006. Ohio State Public Law
Working Paper No. 59.
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