Etymology of the word fuck

folk etymology

• False origins
• Acronyms
  • Fornication Under Consent of the King
  • For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
• Not related to Latin futuere, French foutre, or Italian fottere because not in Romance languages

true etymology

• Proto-Germanic
  • East Germanic
    • Gothic
  • North Germanic
    • Icelandic
    • Norwegian
    • Swedish
    • Danish
  • West Germanic
    • North Sea Germanic
      • Frisian
      • English
    • High German
      • German
      • Dutch
• Proto-Germanic *fuk- “to strike, rub, move back and forth”
• May have also have had sexual meaning
• Modern cognates
  • Dutch fokken
  • German ficken
  • Norwegian fukka
  • Swedish focka
• Likely borrowed into English in 13th to 14th century
  • Prior: sard, jape, swive
• Earliest evidence: names
  • 1287 Fuckebegger, 1290 Fukkebotere
    • Meaning to strike
  • 1310 Roger Fuckebythenavele
• First purely English use in print
  • 1503: poem “Brash of Wowing” by Scottish poet William Dunbar, of flyting fame
• 1528: monk write “O fuckin Abbot” in marginalia of a guide to moral conduct
• 1598: John Florio’s Italian-English dictionary
  • First appearance in dictionary
• First censored appearance
  • 1698: from court proceedings against Captain Edward Rigby for sins of sodomy
• First appearance in English dictionary
  • 1775: John Ash’s New and Complete Dictionary
    • fuck: (v.t. a low vulgar word) perform the act of generation, to have to do with a woman
• 1775: Samuel Johnson intentionally omitted in Dictionary of the English Language
• Some schools banned dictionary for having word for sexual conduct, Florida