The F word. One must admit it is one of the ugliest words in the English language. It is used in all kinds of different situations and has multiple meanings. I must confess that in the most rare and perfectly timed instances I have found it’s use to be hilarious. Unfortunately a vast majority of it’s uses just come off as crude, uneducated and disrespectful. The origins of the word seem to fascinate many people and there are many differing versions.
I have heard a great many people tell the all too common little stories about how we got the F word into the English language. The first is that people would get permission from the king to have relations with each other and they would say that it was “Fornication Under Consent of the King”. The other popular one is that constables would arrest prostitutes and would book them using the acronym for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”. Both of these stories are completely silly and are not true.
The word’s first recorded historical use was around the year 1500. Back then the word was also very controversial and no one would write it down to provide an explanation of where it came from. The best explanation I have heard is that the word comes from one of two words. The Dutch word fokken, which refers to breeding animals and the Swedish fokka which means pretty much just straight up “relations”. Don’t let anyone tell you one of those acronym stories and pass it off as the truth.