A new book that traces the origins of expletives claims that the first written use of f-word in English was by a monk who was cursing his religious leader.
Melissa Mohr documents in her book Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing that the profanity first appeared in 1528.
It was said to have been written by an unnamed monk who was venting his frustration at his abott in England while reading his monastery’s copy of De Officiis, an essay by Marcus Tullius Cicero that was broken up into three books and considering the ‘moral authority’ of the middle ages.
The monk wrote in pencil in the margin of the book: ‘O d f—in abott.’
Mohr says the context is ambiguous and the word could have been meant literally or metaphorically.
However she suggests the monk was using it as an ‘intensifier’ to convey dismay at the religious leader.
‘If (so) it anticipates the first recorded use by more than three hundred years,’ Mohr writes in the book, according to science website io9.
‘Either is possible, really — John Burton, the abbot in question, was a man of questionable monastic morals.’
Mohr notes that, in an interesting perspective from the scribbling, the ‘d’ in the scrawling likely stands for ‘damned’, meaning damnation was a curse a lot more powerful and forbidden than the f-word.
There are at least two other documentations of the word f— before this particular manuscript.
Mohr says, however, that both of these are usually discredited by historians.
The first was said to be seen in 1500 in a satirical poem about friars.
The words were written in a secret code, but the medieval translation roughly amounted to: ‘They are not in heaven, because they f— the wives of Ely.’
The next second in a poem by Scottish writer William Dunbar.
Some time before his death in 1513 Dunbar is said to have penned this six-lined poem:
‘He clappit fast, he kist and chukkit,
As with the the glaikis he we ovirgane
Yit be his feirris he wald have f—it …
He embraced fast, he kissed and groped
As if he were overcome with desire
Yet it seemed from his behavior he would f—ed.’
The etymology of the f-word is constantly being disputed, however its origins are believed to be Germanic, the letter ‘f’ followed by a vowel and a consonant meaning ‘copulate’.
The f-word is one of the most versatile in the English language, often used as a verb, an adverb, an adjective and a noun.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2555587/The-history-blasphemy-Origins-f-word-moral-guide-book-written-MONK.html
