Back Issues would like to commend Elon Green and the good researchers over at The Awl, who have assembled an impressive list of the first occurrences of classic profanities in this magazine’s pages. The New Yorker editor William Shawn was indeed known for his “vigilance against vulgarity,” as Green puts it, yet we take exception to their implication that the magazine retains a prudish streak. As Brendan Gill remarked in his 1969 review of “Portnoy’s Complaint”: “Obscenity is a notable enhancer of life and is suppressed at grave peril to the arts.”

That said, we respectfully offer a few corrections to The Awl’s list. The first instance of the word “asshole” did not, we regret to say, run in Rebecca Johnson’s 1994 Talk story “Making the Fur Fight Fly.” That honor actually goes to Judith Speyer’s short story “The Man With a Balloon in His Heart,” which ran in the issue of June 30, 1975:

Barbara thinks, You could pass a compliment once or twice in your life. You could tell me that even if you can’t love me now, you did love me once, in the beginning…. But he won’t. Instead he says, almost every night, “You are an asshole. Your mother is an asshole. Your father is an asshole. I am lost in a den of assholes.”

The first use of the word “blow job” occurs not in Tad Friend’s “Remake Man,” from 2003, but in Mary Gaitskill’s “Turgor,” a 1995 short story about a casual encounter between a female Berkeley professor and a younger man:

“Actually, you remind me of a real prick I used to be involved with about ten years ago—not that you’re a prick or anything. He was weird in a lot of ways. He was the only man I’ve ever known who didn’t like blow jobs.” “I don’t like them much, either,” Frederick said. “Because most girls aren’t any good at them. Except the last girl—and I think that was a guy.”

This error is more understandable. Most people would search for “blowjob,” whereas New Yorker style is two words: “blow job.”

Likewise, it’s worth noting that while it’s correct that “fuckin’ ” first ran in Calvin Trillin’s “I’ve Got Problems,” published in the March 18, 1985, issue, the first occurrence of a stand-alone “fuck” ran in a Bobbie Ann Mason short story “In Country,” three months later, in the June 3rd issue. Additionally, the first instance of the word “cunt” ran not in Kurt Andersen’s “The Culture Industry,” in 1997, but in Philip Roth’s 1995 short story “The Ultimatum,” excerpted from the novel “Sabbath’s Theater”:

When, while he was fucking Drenka up at the Grotto, his mother hovered just above his shoulder, over him like the home-plate umpire peering in from behind the catcher’s back, he would wonder if she had somehow popped out of Drenka’s cunt the moment before he entered it, if that was where his mother’s spirit lay curled up, patiently awaiting his appearance.

In the archive, we keep track not only of linguistic firsts but also visual ones. This Peter Steiner cartoon, from 1994, is the first recorded illustration of full-frontal male nudity in the magazine.

For those who wish to explore this topic further, we recommend Calvin Trillin’s recent essay for the Canadian Globe and Mail, “How I Got Dirty Words Into The New Yorker.”