When you hear the F-word in a modern Hollywood movie about life in an earlier century, you may wonder if this expletive is an anachronism. Is the F-word of recent vintage, or did Hollywood actually get right this time? Grant recommends a book on the subject, Encyclopedia of Swearing by Geoffrey Hughes. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “History of the F-Word”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Vicki from LaGrange, Texas.
Hi, Vicki.
Hi, Vicki. How are you doing?
I’ve been wondering when the F word came to be used in casual conversation. I know it sounds odd when I hear the word in contemporary movies that are set in other centuries, and I don’t know if that’s because I grew up on movies where it was not used by anyone, and maybe that colored my perceptions.
So is Hollywood historically inaccurate in the words people used in earlier times? Or were we just sugar-coated in the golden age of movies?
Good question.
Yes to both. Hollywood is inaccurate to a certain degree in that they, I think they put that in the mouth of far too many people, but we can’t know for sure because the thing is, I’ve talked about this before. The cursing and the four-letter words and the obscene language, it’s not a straight progression from rare to frequent. That is, we don’t necessarily use it more frequently now than other points in history.
The F word, for example, at certain points in the history of English, has been an ordinary word amongst certain people, say farmers. They might refer to their cattle doing the act. It’s not the kind of thing that people snickered behind their hands. It wasn’t necessarily an epithet that you cursed with. It might have just been a perfectly ordinary word, another synonym in your arsenal of language to refer to a certain act.
I know what the New York Times wrote about that stuff, and I know what other people have written about that. I think it misunderstands history. I think the thing about the Victorian era, there wasn’t one English any more than there is one English now. There were different registers of language, and among a certain moneyed, rich, educated class, that’s how they behaved.
But there were many millions of common people throughout the United Kingdom and the rest of the English-speaking world who used that word daily as an everyday part of conversation, and we can find it in their letters and books and reports written about them. We can find it most of all in court cases where this kind of language is reported accurately because it’s intrinsic to whatever legal proceedings are happening. So it requires that they get it down in print accurately.
Just like right now in this society, the Supreme Court just said it’s okay for the government to say that you can’t say these words on broadcast television. Well, we have one standard there, and yet on cable television, we use these words and hear these words freely. So it’s different standards at the same time. And it was the same then, it’s the same now.
Thank you. That’s a very detailed answer. I didn’t realize the question was that complex.
Oh, yes, indeed.
Yes.
Well, I hope it’s been some help. There’s certainly a lot to be said about this. Let me recommend a book to you if you want some more information. There’s a book by Jeffrey Hughes. He’s a Brit, I believe, and it’s called The Encyclopedia of Swearing. And certainly in the preface and various entries, he goes into the historical detail of this kind of language. And it’s not a purient book. It’s not something you open and there are goofy cartoons that you can giggle at. Within academic work where he treats this stuff with some sophistication.
Well, thank you very much.
You’re welcome. Thank you for calling, Vicki.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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