Trae Crowder - Sidney Powell is Somethin Else Y'all

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. A history of F

http://archaicdictionary.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-fucking-history-of-fuck.html

We've all heard that hoary old saw when we were kids about how the word "fuck" originally came from from an the term "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" or maybe "Fornication Under Command Of The King", usually with some sort of elaborate explanation having to do with Henry VIII or Richard The Lionheart. Of course it's utter nonsense and I'm constantly surprised that anyone actually takes that in any way seriously.



But then most people have the idea that swearing is a relatively recent thing. We get that Victorians swore but earlier than that we somehow assume that everybody spoke like John Milton, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon or Geoffrey Chaucer. Actually we know that people in Tudor and Stuart times swore quite a lot, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth who were quite enthusiastic cursers. OK we might kind of expect that of those two but even Henry's son Edward VI, otherwise seen as a rather humorless Protestant prig (which he was) liked to swear up a storm. So much so that he was frequently punished by his tutors for being too profane even by the standards of Henry VIII, which must have quite a trick. So swearing was thoroughly commonplace in the 1500's.
In fact it was so commonplace that in the 1551's Mary Queen Of Scots passed a law banning the foul habit. Punishments included the use of "swearboxes" (in case you were wondering who came up with the idea of the home or office "swearjar&quot or a right good paddling. When her son James VI became king James I of England as well in 1603 he took those laws with him to his new kingdom. The success of these laws can be seen in the fact that to this day hardly anybody in the English speaking world swears anymore. Problem solved.

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