Earliest use of the “f” word recorded in English: 1310

September 12, 2015 • 2:30 pm

I really hate using euphemisms such as the “f word” instead of “fuck,” for I don’t see what is gained by the truncation, and in truth it seems a bit prudish. But my titles must be family friendly, and so the above.

At any rate, Medievalists.net, which I take to be a serious and respectable site about the Middle Ages, reports the discovery of the earliest use of, well, the “f word”. Its report:

An English historian has come across the word ‘fuck’ in a court case dating to the year 1310, making it the earliest known reference to the swear word.

Dr Paul Booth of Keele University spotted the name in ‘Roger Fuckebythenavele’ in the Chester county court plea rolls from December 8, 1310. The man was being named as part of a process to be outlawed.

Dr Booth believes that “this surname is presumably a nickname. I suggest it could either mean an actual attempt at copulation by an inexperienced youth, later reported by a rejected girlfriend, or an equivalent of the word ‘dimwit’ i.e. a man who might think that that was the correct way to go about it.”

Prior to Dr. Booth’s discovery, the previous earliest use of the word was in them poem Flen flyys, written around 1475. It had a line that read “fvccant vvivys of heli”, a Latin/English mix meaning “…they fuck the wives of Ely”. Historians have come across earlier uses of the word in medieval England, but have doubted that it was being used as a sexual reference. For example, the name John le Fucker appears in 1278, but this likely could be just a different spelling for the word ‘fulcher’ which means soldier.

In his book, The F Word, Jesse Sheidlower explains “fuck is a word of Germanic origin. It is related to words in several other Germanic languages, such as Dutch, German, and Swedish, that have sexual meanings as well as meaning such as ‘to strike’ or ‘to move back and forth’.”

Poor Roger! And it’s interesting that they’d use a nickname—if that’s what it was—in a court proceedings.

This antedating by 165 years is almost as momentous for linguistics as the discovery of H. naledi is for paleontology. And of course the real use of “fuck” or “fucke” in language must be substantially earlier than 1310.

94 thoughts on “Earliest use of the “f” word recorded in English: 1310”

      1. I prefer to use the language as a means of relieving stress in a situation. However those who just use it find it loses its punch and they find piling on all those stress reliever words aren’t enough anymore. I met such a person whose limited vocabulary stayed limited.

        It is fascinating how old it is and to what it was sued for. Since it can mean “having sex” and also “messed in the head” which some people seem to be under the influence of sex…

  2. And the word has evolved into a very useful and versatile word: a noun, verb, adverb and adjective.
    I’ve always appreciated Lewis Black’s grammatically correct sentence; “Fuck fucking fucked fucker fucking fuckups fuck fucking fucked fucking fuckup fucking fucker’s fucking fuckup.”

      2. … in Swahili (or what little I learned), that’s “mata tisu.” Or at least, close enough.
        I remember recently – the last few months – promising to relate the story of “Dumbfuck Kevin,” one of the shoe-size IQs in the oilfield. But I can’t remember if it was someone here, or in “Real Life ™”?
        Poor Roger. Contrary to the impression from Robin Hood, being outlawed was not good news.

          1. I learned to speak it, not write it. Evidently my spelling of “mata tisu” is itself, matisu. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?

  3. I’m racking my brain on what swedish words would be more directly related to fuck. I can come up with a lot of substitutes, but not something that seems to share an etymology.

    1. The entry for “fuck” at etymonline.com mentions “Swedish dialectical focka ‘copulate, strike, push’ and fock ‘penis.'”

  4. Ha! That reminds me of a blond joke!
    Why have some women bruises around the navel?
    Well, there are blond men, too.

    errm, yea… History of languages and medieval literature was one of my majors. These guys were quite creative when it came to insulting people. I can speak only for German medieval literature, but it’s full of sexual innuendo. Fun, once you learn the euphemisms (i.e rat was a common euphemism for penis, so ‘catch my rat’ had very *coff* specific meaning) and pars pro totos (i.e. in Minnesang you find a lot of talk about ‘white arms’ meaning the person being described was naked).

    1. Brings a new (well, probably not very new) meaning to “going to the rathaus / and we’re gonna get [something]-ed”.
      Scottish : “getting ratted” for getting drunk.

      1. Aww, sorry to burst your bubble… Rathaus has nothing to do with the word rat… but tourists in Germany always get a kick out of it. LOL

        1. (I had figured that out in my first couple of days in Germany. But that isn’t even going to slow me down about spreading misinformation.)

      2. I believe this is an abbreviation of “rat-arsed”, which would be the more correct term for totally drunk, and not forgetting “I don’t give a rat’s arse” for “I don’t care”. I’m not sure why rat’s rears are so popular linguistically, though I had a cat once (a beautiful Abyssinian) who used to catch rats, eat the pointy end and leave the arse on the garden path, with tail still attached for easy disposal.

  5. It shouldn’t be surprising that they used a nickname in the court record. That, in a nutshell, is the origin of the innumerable names based on place, habitat, occupation, physical characteristic or even one’s parent.

    Julie London, Albert Marsh, John Carpenter, Maxwell Short, Ian Peterson. All last (later family or sur-) names starting as a nickname (Julie of London, John the Carpenter, even Ian the son of Peter). All are descriptive “nicknames” used to differentiate this John from the numerous other Johns.

    “Coyne,” or whatever name Coyne derived from, probably meant (or still means) some such thing in some language. Have any idea what it is?

    1. Coyne is a surname of Irish origin anglicised from the Gaelic Ó Cadhain meaning “descendant of Cadhan” – Wiki

    2. I believe it’s related to the name Cohen. Jews with the name Cohen are given the honor to read first from a portion of the Torah in synagogues. The second bit is read by a Levi and the last bit is read by Jews with other names.

      2. My Irish catholic grandmother was a Coyne. The cemetery where my great grandfather is buried is full of Coyne headstones. There was a story in the family that the Coynes originally came from Germany and were jewish, but I think that is totally a myth. No Coynes on my mothers side of the family, but they were all Jewish.

    3. That is what I was thinking. In medieval towns, everyone could have the same last name, which is the name of the feudal lord. This is a way to distinguish one Roger from another.

    4. Some names have dual derivation.

      Natalie is both the female form of the Jewish Nathaniel, but also means Christmas in Latin.

    5. Funny that they’d use the phrase “fuck by the navel” as a last name for poor Roger.

      Then again, the term “Quaker” was originally a joking slur by a an English judge after the religion’s founder said something about trembling before the Lord, and it caught on. British judges were dicks. 🙂

  6. I guess ‘fuck’ is related to the Dutch word ‘fokken’ which is best translated as ‘to breed’. A horse breeder is in dutch a ‘paardenfokker’.

    If you want to say “I breed horses” in Dutch, say: “Ik fok paarden.”

      1. Yes. It can be the source of a lot of confusion if a dutch horse breeder doesn’t speak proper english.

  7. The “f” word has a lot of urban legends surrounding its origin. The one I was told in junior high was that it was a Puritan acronym for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”. This and other phony but amusing etymologies are at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck#False_etymologies.

    The cited poem is Flen, flyys, and freris (“Fleas, flies, and friars”). The line is explaining why the Carmelite friars are not in heaven.

  8. And it’s interesting that they’d use a nickname—if that’s what it was—in a court proceedings.

    I thought the theory was that all surnames originated as nicknames on tax rolls and other legal documents. John-the-Miller, John-the-Stout, John-Black-hair, John-who-lives-by-the-Ford, and so on.

  9. Speaking of Germanic cognates, there’s the oft-told story of the WW II air force veteran, a Minnesota Swede, relating his war experience… The punch line goes, “Yah, but this Fokker, he was a Messerschmidt”

    1. Yeah, you ruined that joke by telling the punchline first

      The version I heard something like this:

      Teacher invites a Polish airman who fought in the Battle of Britain to come and talk to the class [there were whole squadrons of Polish airmen in the RAF at that time].

      “Tell us something of your experiences during the war” says the teacher.

      “Ve vere on patrol vhen out of ze Sun came zees Fokkers—”

      Some sniggers are heard around the classroom.

      “Shh,” says the teacher. “A Fokker is a kind of aeroplane.”

      “Ya, vell zees Fokkers vere in Messerchmitts.”

  10. I was surprised by this story – I assumed there was evidence of it being used much earlier than this based on its etymology. A scientist teaching me about my own subject (medieval England) – disgraceful! 🙂

  12. My favourite is ‘knocking’, as in ‘knocking shop’ for brothel, which I suspect is related to ‘nookie’. Interestingly, these two sound similar to the Welsh verb for fuck, which is ‘cnychu’, pronounced ‘knukhy’, which seems so close to knurken in Dutch that I suspect cnychu to be a loanword into Welsh from Anglo-Saxon – which suggests that ‘fuck’ itself may be a more recent loanword into some early version of English. I emailed the OED about this as their entry for knocking shop seemed fanciful, and they said they’d bear it in mind, which was very diplomatic of them.

  13. Surely this is one of the first examples of onomatopoeia. Anyone who has had a ‘good’ weekend away would recognize the origin of the word.

  14. Roger Fuckebythenavele? The Roger Fuckebythenavele?

    Why, I do believe I met his great…great-grandson once, in Scotland. Charming fellow tending the bar in a pub. One of the regulars shouted his nickname from the other side of the room — a rather rude and unusual nickname, but Roger dutifully (though a bit sheepishly) filled the order without complaint.

    I, of course, had to ask, so he told me his story.

    “See this beautiful oak bar here? Felled the tree myself, I did. Jointed it carved it, installed it — did it all myself. But do they call me Roger Barmaker? No.

    “And when ye came into town, you might have noticed a stout bridge over the creek. Not a crack in it; holds up despite all the trucks and cattle that cross it. I cleared away the rubble of the old fallen bridge all by myself, and hauled in all the new stones by hand, made the mortar — well you get the picture. That’s my bridge; I built it. But do the call me Roger Bridgebuilder? No, of course not.

    “And one time I even saved the Mayor’s whole family from the flames, pulled the lot of them out of their burning home. But that doesn’t make them call me Roger the Fireman.

    “For, you see, this one time when I was but a young lad, just this one time, I was lonely, and there was this sheep, and little Suzie hiding in the bushes saw me…

    “…and, for just that once, I’m always Roger Sheepfucker to these ungrateful bastards!”

    b&

  15. ‘Roger Fuckebythenavele’

    “May I put my finger in your navel, lass?”

    “Certainly, … Hey, that’s not my navel!”

    “No worries, that’s not my finger, either.”

    Just so.

      1. Me, too. I was in second grade in parochial school. Been saving it ever since. Still the only dirty joke I know with “navel” in it.

          1. Get some Nashville session guys to add a few banjo and guitar licks, and you got yourself a #1 country hit with that lyric.

    1. Reminds me of the Groucho line: “Did you ever notice that Peter O’Toole has a doubly phallic name?”

          2. Randy “the Big Unit” Johnson’s slider … naw, I got nothin’.

            He was a helluva hurler, though.

  20. My favourite word. It’s so … satisfying to say.

    (That’s an essential characteristic of a good swearword. Decades ago, in school French class, someone asked the teacher for a good French swearword. After some thought she came up with ‘saperlipopette!’ I’ve never looked it up but I instantly knew, just from the sound, that it couldn’t be a proper swearword).

    cr

    1. The first word our new French teacher taught us in 8th grade was ‘merde’. I’ve forgotten most of the French I learned in school, but not that word.

    2. Germanic swearing is always the most satisfying though I could just be biased because I speak a Germanic language.

      When not swearing, my two favourite words are “egregious” & “dastardly”.

  21. I don’t quite agree with either Chukar or Gregory Kusnick about all surnames being nicknames. English surnames are of 4 types. Surnames of relationship Richardson, Johnson etc, and even Doctor (from daughter); local names Atwell, London, Derbyshire; Occupation or office – Clerk, Wright, Founder; and nicknames such as Cruikshank and Vidler (face of a wolf).

    1. Your comment reiterates my comment, in which I did mention the four types of surnames you describe, plus a fifth of physiognomy, e.g. Will ‘Short’ or Longfellow.

      I’m using a more inclusive definition of “nickname” than just a substitute name that connotes ridicule or familiarity, but which includes descriptive terms used to differentiate between two people bearing the same “given” (aka “Christian”) name.

      My initial point being that such “types” of surnames function just as do nicknames. Over decades and centuries they became formalized into surnames. “The son of John,” “of London,” “by the marsh,” “the wheelwright,” “the short;” these are just as much nicknames as are “sneezer” or “Tex.”

      The origins of s surname may be lost in antiquity, but the “types” of surname are limited, with the 5 mentioned above covering every European-origin surname I’ve ever run across. Other cultures have additional types.

  22. Roger Ackroyd in The history of England Vol 1 says that though surnames were introduced by the Normans, by the 14th century still only distinguished families might have a distinctive name. So common folk would likely have names describing some personal peculiarity.

        2. Did they actually sack Hastings? The Wikipedia page on the battle doesn’t mention it and googling ‘sack of Hastings’ doesn’t bring up anything positive.

          Since they took the hint and held their battle at Battle a few miles away, I’m guessing Hastings wasn’t unduly damaged (though I’m sure historians will know). I have a kinda proprietary interest since I was born there a few centuries later…

          cr

          1. Yeah, I took an artistic liberty there; “held a battle in the vicinity of Hastings” doesn’t have quite the same ring. Apologies to your hometown.

            Could you check on yer google and see if all the French guys there were actually named “Norm.” I was a little iffy on that part, too.

          2. That’s okay,apology accepted. The town was still there last century (when I arrived).

            Sources suggest that at least one of the French guys was named William. There were probably quite a lot more named [something-other-than-Norm], in fact ‘Norman’ doesn’t seem to be a French name at all.

            😉

            cr

    2. Interesting. I suspected as much. I read Braudel’s “The Structures of Everyday Life” several decades ago, but the the fact stuck with me that, well after the 1600’s, most Europeans never saw a coin larger than a penny during their entire life. Most commerce among the commonfolk was by barter. The history of the aristocracy was very different from that of the other 99%.

  23. Of course the word dates at least to the time of Jesus Fucking Christ himself and the establishment of the Holy Trinity-one Jesus Fucking Christ, three people-one a noun, one a verb and one an adjective.

  24. “Fuck” is the best word in the English language. Many years ago, in the dawn of the internet, I read a very nice essay on the history and usage of “fuck”, but I can find it any more. Pity.

  27. I always understood it to be an Acronym for the right of Medieval Soldiers to Rape ,as in “Fornication under the King”, but its a very useful Word as when you hit your Thumb with a Hammer , “Oh Dear” doesn’t cut it .

    1. FUCK as an acronym fits many situations;
      Finger Unhealthy, Clubbed, Knackered

      In a car race crash: Failed Unexpectedly, Crashed, Killed

      In windsurfing: Fallen Under, Capsized, Keeled or when struggling to clear the sail before waterstarting: Frustrating Under Currents Kanutr {Kanutr Inn Riki being the Old Norse for King Canute}

      General discontent: Feel Unhappy, Cross, Kvetching or Frustration, Unhappiness, Cursing, Kopfschmerzen

      Forgotten Unfortunately Can’t Know

      What soldiers might have said on seeing the door to their castle broken down by battering ram during siege: Failed Under Constant Knocking

      Female Unhappy, Can’t Kiss

      Foods Undesirable: Chili, Korma

      Fish Undesirable; Conger, Krill

      Religiously: Forgive Underperformance, Christ, Kirie ( New Advent website says,”Kyrie Eleison (Greek for “Lord have mercy”; the Latin transliteration supposes a pronunciation as in Modern Greek) is a very old, even pre-Christian, expression used constantly in all Christian liturgies” )

      Or phonetically similar acronyms:
      Phucc : Phone Unavailable Can’t Call

      When you have walked too far while out mountaineering: Feet Unwell, Can’t Climb

      Fell Unfortunately, Couldn’t Catch

      1. Phucc ( Fuck phonetically )
        Please help; unhappy children crying

        Citizens arrest: Please Hold Until Cops Come

        Your child has been arrested by police :
        Police Have Unfortunately Chained Child

        On seeing your belongings disappear into the distance: Police Have Unsuccessfully Chased Criminals

        Hijack of plane: Pilot Has Unhappy Cabin Crew

        Parent Has Unfortunately Caught Cold

        When hanging off the edge of a cliff with someone holding your wrist: Please Hold Until Climber Can

        1. PHUCC (Fuck phonetically):
          Priest Has Unbelievably Crap Creeds
          Prophet Has Unbelievable Crummy Creed
          Priest Herds Unwisely Credulous Children

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