what is the origins of the F-word??
395659
The f-word is actually latin.  Deriving the etymology of this word is difficult, because it's been a taboo for most of its existence and citations are rare. The earliest known use, according to American Heritage and Lighter, predates 1500 and is from a poem written in a mix of Latin and English and entitled Flen flyys. The relevant line reads:\n\n    Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli.\n\nTranslated:\n\n    They [the monks] are not in heaven because they f*** the wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].\n\nFuccant is a pseudo-Latin word and in the original it is written in cipher to further disguise it.\n\nSome sources cite an alleged use from 1278 as a personal name, John le F***er, but this citation is questionable. No one has properly identified the document this name supposedly appears in and even if it is real, the name is likely a variant of fuker, a maker of cloth, fulcher, a soldier, or another similar word.\n\nThe most popular origin, however is INCORRECT is that it's beleived to have originated around the 15th century in either the English, Dutch, or low-German language.  The word's first definition appeared in 1967 when an underground newspaper called the East Village Other published this version in 1967:\n\n    "It's not commonly known that the word "f***" originated as a medical diagnostic notation on the documests of soldiers in the British Imperial Army. When a soldier reported sick and was found to have V.D., the abbreviation F.U.C.K. was stamped on his documents. It was short for "Found Under Carnal Knowledge." \n\nAnother theory suggests that in ancient England single people could not have sex unless they had consent of the king. When people wanted to have a baby, they had to get the consent of the king, and the king gave them a placard that they hung on their door while they were having sex. The placard had F. U. C. K. (Fornication Under Consent of the King) on it.\n\nHowever, other stories past down through the years tells a different side of things.  In Christianized Anglo-Saxon Britain, invading kings would require that their troops would rape the women in a common demoralization procedure. Because fornication was against religious law, the rapists needed special religious permission, from the king.  Pretty grusome stuff...\n\nSome more interesting theories about the word can be found at the sites below.
1165780
No, a lot of times they are just regular words that become associated with bad things, or become slang for bad things. you know, one person says something, then everybody around you is saying it, like a domino effect.\n\nthe infamous S word was acctually an acronym. cow dung and fertilizer was shipped via the cargo hold of a ship, but they could not risk it to get wet, so it could not be on a low level. the poo boxes were marked with Ship High In Transit.\n\ncold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey IS Not acctally a lewd comment. the brass monkey was the thing that cannon balls sat in, and when it froze, it contracted, causing all the balls to fall off.\n\nthe middle finger began in the revolutionary war- when a french archer was caught, (it might be the other way around) the brits would chop off his middle finger. when the brits started to lose, the french would ride by and gloat, by showing off their intact middle finger.  \n\nfun, huh? I don't remember anymore, but basically it is a word evolution. its just made up and gains meaning.\nnobody knew what n00b meant ten years ago...
555893
It's slang from the UK & Ireland, a made up phrase to avoid cursing when surprised or annoyed.\n\nIt's also a slang term for a sexual position.
479319
Fashion decides which words are okay, which words are sacred and which words are profane.  Usually driven by self-appointed arbiters of "decency".  It's actually an interesting subject if you dig into it a bit.
900912
Who made up any word.....;
738844
<>The word you are looking for is "fornication."  It means to perform the sexual act of procreation.  The origin of the "f---" word is rife with myth and lore.  One version is that it comes from an acronym of "fornication under carnal knowledge," a description of a crime of adultery.
437184
Here follows some theories:\n\nThe exact origin of "say uncle" or "cry uncle," an American invention first appearing in written English around 1918, is unclear, but there are, as usual, some interesting theories. One theory posits that "uncle" is actually a mangled form of the Irish word "anacol," meaning "protection" or "safety," making a demand from an aggressor to "cry uncle" equivalent to the thug demanding that his victim "cry for help" as a signal of surrender. There's no real evidence to support this theory, but there certainly was no lack of recent Irish immigrants in the U.S. around the turn of the century, so it's not entirely implausible.\n\nThe other popular theory about "cry uncle" suggests that the phrase may actually be thousands of years old, and that its origins go all the way back to the Roman Empire. According to this theory, Roman children, when beset by a bully, would be forced to say "Patrue, mi Patruissimo," or "Uncle, my best Uncle," in order to surrender and be freed. As to precisely why Ancient Roman bullies forced their victims to "cry uncle," opinions vary. It may be that the ritual was simply a way of making the victim call out for help from a grownup, thus proving his or her helplessness. Alternatively, it may have started as a way of forcing the victim to grant the bully a title of respect -- in Roman times, your father's brother was accorded nearly the same power and status as your father. The form of "uncle" used in the Latin phrase ("patrue") tends to support this theory, inasmuch as it specifically denoted your paternal uncle, as opposed to the brother of your mother ("avunculus"), who occupied a somewhat lower rung in patrilineal Roman society.
43675
there is a lot of history behind the n-word. It was originally used to hurt black people, and to make them feel inferior however, some black people have taken it and flipped the meaning in an effort to give it a pos. connotation, like how women sometimes refer to each other as hoes, b*****s, etc. but if you'd like more info on the topic read "N*i*g*g*e*r: the strange career of a troublesome word" by Randall Kennedy.
1097116
The fighting-words doctrine was first articulated in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). Chaplinsky was convicted of violating a New Hampshire statute that prohibited the use of offensive, insulting language toward persons in public places after making several inflammatory comments to a city official. The Court, in upholding the statute as constitutional, set down those famous words: \n\nThere are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
30179
just saying the word is not in itself, a sin.  the only reason we have profanity in the first place is because of pride, one of the 7 "deadly" sins.  however, using any word inappropriately could be sin.  there are too many unknowns in each circumstance to say one word is a sin.  \n\nreally it's more of a cultural/social no-no
414615
These words come from different root languages and time periods. Check out this Wikipedia link:
1014852
Many factors......it would depend on how old the student is.....how the F word was used.....EXAMPLE: F off --- yes, get the F out of here ----yes ----or Oh F! why did I drop that?  (in a H.S. Biology lab) no.
666411
Profanity is an extension of taboo vocabulary and is universal in all human languages.  Therefore, the first humans to use modern language (about 100,000 years ago) "invented" taboo vocabulary, and, by extension, the inappropriate use of taboo vocabulary, which is profanity.\n\nEDIT:  As a note, "f u c k" is NOT an acronym, it is reconstructible to Proto-Germanic as a term for human intercourse *fuk- and ultimately is a euphemism based on Proto-Indo-European *pug- 'to strike'.  It is not, and has NEVER been, and acronym.  It has an ancient Indo-European pedigree.
6498
ummm...they come from damnation which is a synonym for condemnation.  to damn is to condemn.  people use it but don't really know what it means.  when they say it, they're actually condemning the person to hell, or in the case of "goddamn" asking God to sentence the person to hell.  it truly is a curse on someone.\n\ni'm not sure when it was first used, but it would have started as a regular word used as "to condemn".  most likely, it was a religiously-affiliated word considering its topic of hell and God.
575045
This one is not easy.. For one idea, go to the URL below:\n\nhttp://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-jaz1.htm\n\nHOWEVER. I think of all the possibilities, the origin of the word "jazz" is probably that which is traced back to a vulgar term used for sexual acts
1169336
If you're asking when the word "gay" came to be associated with homosexuals, particularly males, it emerged from Britain in the late 19th century as a sort of "codeword" for being able to identify each other.\n\nThose were in the days when we didn't have a strong identity in the culture and wouldn't say that "fruit" is a bigoted word to use in connection with homosexual people.
19769
The long answer:\n\nGay was a term that was appropriated by homosexual people in the 1970's too mean homo.  They wanted a word that had positive connotations because they wanted to remove the stigma that was associated with being a homosexual. \n\nQueer was a word used by homophobic people to sander homosexuals.  It originally meant strange, odd, or out of place, but was taken and used to specifically attack homosexual individuals in the same way that the N-word was used to attack African Americans.  In the mid-late '90s queer was appropriated by gays who were looking to remove the stigma associated with the word, much the same way black people (and many other minorities) have appropriated the N-word, and use it in everyday speech to remove some of the power that is associated with it.\n\nThe idea is this.  If I use the word queer in my everyday life to describe myself, some bigoted straight white guy who tries to use the word to hurt me fails miserably.  If, however, it's a word that has a deep stigma, a word that only he is privileged enough to use when he's verbally attacking me, the word holds much more power, and the attack is far more potent.  If we minorities, whether we be gay, black, or whatever, decide to take those words back and own them ourselves, we take much of the power away from their previous "owners".\n\n\nThe short answer:\n\nThey're spelled differently.  I use them both interchangeably to describe myself if people ask...