And it's a monk expressing his displeasure at an abbot. In the margins of a guide to moral conduct. Because of course.


Technically, "fuck" appeared two times before this. In 1500, it was used in a satirical poem to describe some friars. In that case, nothing like "fuck" was actually written out. Instead, the word was hidden in a code. And in 1513, it appeared in a Scottish poem as "fukkit."

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But for English's first use, we've got a dissatisfied 1528 monk. He's written "O D fuckin abbot." Melissa Mohr, author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, says this "fuck" could be either literal or metaphorical:

It is difficult to know whether the annotator intended "fucking" to mean "having sex," as in "that guy is doing too much fucking for someone who is supposed to be celibate," or whether he used it as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay; if the latter, it anticipates the first recorded use by more than three hundred years. Either is possible, really—John Burton, the abbot in question, was a man of questionable monastic morals.

So, either this monk was recording his abbot's sex life or he was the first person to be so angry that only "fuck" could convey it's scope.

What's also great is that the "D" probably stands for "damned." The monk had no problem with fucking, but damnation was a curse too far. Honestly, given the meanings, that's fair.


Photo by nigelpornberry via superlinguo