The history of a nasty word
first
a warning as far as offensive words go
you are now entering a hard hat area
we’re going to be unabashed in this i’m
talking to you
about a very particular word a very
powerful word a very
see you next tuesday word
a word that is still so offensive that
the funders of this event would only let
me talk about it
if we censored it on the slides
which rather proves my point don’t you
think
i love this word oh my god i love
everything about this word not just what
it signifies but the actual
the actual sound of it the fact that the
c
and the t just just cushion the sound
into this monosyllabic that you can just
spit like a bullet or you can extend it
out and roll it round your mouth
[Music]
i love its dexterity i love the fact
that in scotland it’s a term of
endearment
but in america it’s horrendously
offensive
i love it means something different with
your friends than it does if you said it
to your boss it would probably cost you
your job
i do not recommend it i love this word
i love the fact that the first three
letters are still the same
chalice shape all rolling through the
word until they’re stopped in that
plosive t
at the end i think the thing i love most
about it is its status as
the nastiest of all the nasty words
although that title is under some
contention now there are other obvious
heavyweight contenders
for the most offensive word the n-word
for example but here’s what i would say
to you i know why that word is offensive
i can look at the history that word
enabled the brutalization and racial
genocide
of an entire group of people it played
its part in dehumanizing
black people what did [ __ ] do
does it not strike anyone else as odd
that a word that just means the vulva
could
even be regarded in the same league of
offense
as the n-word are we saying that vulvas
are that offensive
surely not but what i want to talk to
you today about is how did we get here
has it always been this offensive and
how did it come to be so
the answer is no it was not but let’s
look at the history of it first of all
where in the [ __ ] does couldn’t come
from
it’s one of those words that’s so old
etymologists and linguists kind of
because they lose sight of it
eventually it’s the oldest word for the
vulva that we have in the english
language it might even be the oldest
in the world there are some theories
there are also similar cognitions in
germanic languages all across europe so
the vikings would be talking about
hunters
the germans had cunto dutch [ __ ]
germanic
cot and i think at one point we had cut
which i think may be due for a revival
after that it gets a bit confusing as to
what this word actually means
one of the leading theories is that it
shares this root this
proto-indo-european root with this gen
sounds which you also see in genetics
gene and that means to create another
theory is that it comes from this
sound goon which gives this woman
gynecology
create woman but what really
fascinates linguist is this sound the
cool
sound because that gave us [ __ ] and it
also gave us
cunning cunning originally didn’t mean
sneaky it meant you knew something
cunning folk
cunning women were wise women and in
scotland still today if you can
something it means you know something i
can this
it also gave us queen and cow slightly
bizarre which is
slightly less high brow but
it turns up again in the middle ages in
quent
which means knowledge and also means
[ __ ] it has a latin
variation as well kunis which also means
[ __ ] which is turns up all over the
roman world including in graffiti and
in pompeii some of my favorite roman
graffiti from the city of pompeii
i won’t try and do the latin but it’s
translated to be
a hairy [ __ ] is better [ __ ] than a
smooth one
it wants [ __ ] and holds in steam
there you go however i put it to you
that the word [ __ ] as offensive as it
may be
today stems from a root that means woman
knowledge create cow
has it always been this offensive no
but we’ll talk about this so when we
talk about these words
vulva vagina trying to offer more
palatable alternatives to [ __ ]
vagina the word turns up in the 17th
century it’s taken directly from latin
and it means a scabbard
it means something that a sword goes
into
vulva doesn’t do much better that
appears in the 14th century
and it means womb but some people
suggest it comes from the french
means rapper both these words derive
their meaning and their import
from the penis basically that’s what a
vagina is it’s something a sword
goes into i say that these words aren’t
as feminist as [ __ ]
which comes from a word that means queen
create
wisdom cow
when did it first start being used in
english as we recognize it today
grope couldn’t lane this is the first
recorded instant the oxford english
dictionary turns up in 12
30 a street name in london called grope
[ __ ] lane
which was exactly what it sounds like
this was in the red light district of
southwark it was a lane for groping
[ __ ]
and there wasn’t just one in london
there was one in bristol there was one
in york they piss
all over the british isles here it is
there’s the one in bristol
it’s like oxford there is just in blue
but whereas glaswegians might be calling
each other and their friends [ __ ] it
seems that medieval people were calling
their children [ __ ] because it turns up
in a number of names
bizarrely enough vladimir clark hunt
is recorded in 1066 guernica cuntells
in 1219 john phil [ __ ]
in 1246 robert cleveland
1302 and a miss belle wide [ __ ]
turns up in the norfolk subsidiary role
we don’t know if these are aliases or if
they’re jokes
but we do have a lot of fun with
medieval names in fact originally the
word [ __ ]
did not mean what it means today it
means to strike something to hit
which gives us the fabulous name of a
dairy farmer in 1290 who’s known as
simon [ __ ] butter
so was it this offensive to medieval
people no it wasn’t
[ __ ] turn up all over medieval culture
and medieval literature and they are
certainly not offensive it’s just a
descriptive term
here’s some examples the proverbs of
hending from 1325 advises
women to give your [ __ ] cunningly and
make your demands later i
get a ring on it first before you give
it up
there’s a welsh poet called gwyford
mccain from the 15th century and she
advises
a male poet to celebrate the fine bright
curtain of a [ __ ] that flaps in place of
greeting
it might surprise us that medieval
culture was this open about [ __ ] but
the truth was they were more sexually
liberated than we actually give them
credit for
this idea of them being in a tower with
a chastity belt on is largely
a hatchet job on their reputation done
by the victorians
now it wasn’t a sexually liberated
utopia they had their own hang-ups
but they weren’t that offended by sex
well get you in trouble swear words
middle ages was religious ones
blasphemous ones
if you said something like god’s wounds
or god’s teeth that’s what you’d say if
you’re
caught you think you’re flying you’re
soft and danglies and you fly
one middle later one medieval poet
who drops the c bomb with the precision
of a military drone is this chap
jeffrey chaucer who turns up in gcse’s
a-level syllabuses although his [ __ ]
jokes are generally not
dwelled upon this is history he doesn’t
use the word [ __ ] he uses the word
quenta
here which again means knowledge and it
means [ __ ] so this is his joke
as the clark’s been full subtle uh full
here quenta and privily he caught her by
the cuenta a rough translation means
the clerk was really cunning and he
caught her by the [ __ ]
shakespeare it’s been suggestion that he
uses that play
a quaint quenta [ __ ] in his sonic
in his sonic number 20. here he is
it certainly turns up in a lot of his
work
it’s a lot ruder than we often give him
credit for in hamlet act 3 scene 2.
hamlet says to ophelia he says shall i
lie in your lap and she says oh no my
lord and then he says do you think i
meant country matters
when david tennant played that part he
paused on there do you think i meant
[ __ ]
rematters to try and really drive it
home
another one twelfth night malvolio says
of his mistresses handwriting there be
her sees her use her teeth and that thus
she makes her very great peas
punning on [ __ ] and piss simultaneously
the immortal bard’s status as a smoke
peddler is often swept under the
cultural rug
in 1707 thomas boulder
published the family shakespeare where
he edited out all of these jokes all of
the rude bits and made a completely
cunt-free affair
it’s no surprise that about this time we
start to get the first libel laws in
britain the first uh banning of
seditious and offensive pamphlets with
the rise of puritanism
for shakespeare to be veiling his [ __ ]
jokes and kind of cheeky dublin tundras
suggests that it’s not quite as free and
open as guernica controls and grope [ __ ]
lane
would once have had
the puritans repressed sexuality we know
this
and language is an extremely important
battleground for sexual liberation how
do you talk about your bodies if the
very words that you’re trying to use are
considered to be offensive
how do you do that and by the time we
get to the restoration period the
early modern period [ __ ] is most
certainly offensive
and this chap here john wilmer earl of
rochester
is the absolute poster boy of [ __ ] you
if the puritans tried to dam up
sexuality this guy
surfed to notoriety on a wave of sexual
repression that was unleashed when the
plug was pulled on the puritan rule
he uses [ __ ] a lot and he’s very naughty
about it
he wrote this poem about his mistress
and how jealous he was of her other
lovers
when your lewd [ __ ] came spewing home
drenched with the seed of half the town
my drum of sperm was sucked up after for
the digestive surface water
full gouged another time with a vast
meal of slime
which your devouring [ __ ] who missed one
half drawn from portis backs
and footman’s brawn for everyone
he uses that word to shock and it’s easy
to look at his work and think that he’s
sexually liberated but he’s actually
quite angry at [ __ ] and their owners
and that goes all the way through it
from here on out [ __ ] is an offensive
naughty word george and [ __ ] here we go
i’ll just let that settle so what
happens about the 18th century is the
print industry really explodes
and of course we being humans we didn’t
just want to publish nice books
we published porn
there’s a huge proliferation of porn
that comes out of the 18th century but
oddly enough most of it shies away from
using that word [ __ ]
in 1785 francis gross published his
book a dictionary of a vulgar tone which
is basically a dictionary of slang
and he defined [ __ ] as a nasty name for
a nasty thing
such modesty from someone who also uses
the word buccaneers boot
lobster pot skut and mrs frub’s parlor
for the vulva this book here
harris’s list this is an almanac it’s a
directory of sex workers in london at
the time who was selling sex
and it lists not only their address and
their prices
but very very intimate descriptions of
what they do
and their vulvas but it doesn’t use [ __ ]
very much
this one here this is an illustration
fabulous illustration from
fanny hill what’s often called the first
pornographic novel which was published
in 1748 by john cleland
who famously boasted that he did it
without writing any rude words at all
these texts tend to use expressions like
mossy grot
cupid’s coal hole venus’s mounds
but we shy away from [ __ ]
victorian so despite their reputation
for being sexually prudish
pornography flowed underneath victoria
uppercut society like a river of slime
and ghostbusters 2.
they had pornography all over the place
visual and literary and they had a lot
of fun with [ __ ]
one of their pornographic magazines the
pearl was published from
1879 to 1880 and it published in it
nursery rhymes everywhere every month
i’ve got some here for you to have a
look at
there was a young lady of hitchen who
was scratching her [ __ ] in the kitchen
her father said rose it’s the crabs i
suppose you’re right par the buggers are
itching
there was a young man of bombay who
fashioned a [ __ ] out of clay
but the heat of his prick turned it into
a brick and it chafed all his foreskin
away
yeah well done victorian well done
interestingly it’s also in the 19th
century that we get the first recorded
use of couldn’t being used as an insult
as an actual you are a [ __ ] that’s the
first time that it’s used in the 19th
century
in the 17th century we start it being
used as a kind of a
derogatory collective noun for women
samuel peeps writes about this
aphrodisiac that’s going to make all the
[ __ ] chase after him
charming that’s when they weren’t
stabbing him with pins for being too
sexually aggressive
anyway the victorians liked a
well-placed [ __ ]
one of the most important [ __ ] moments
in history is this
is the um publication and the subsequent
obscenity trial of lady chateley’s lover
this book contained 14 [ __ ] and 40
books
and it was banned and it had to go on
trial orders to be published and it was
shocking not just because the graphic
scenes of sex
and the and the language used but
because it smashes down class boundaries
if you’re not familiar with this it’s
about lady constance chatley a married
woman
who um embarks on affair with with sean
being here
uh but with mel is the game keep and the
idea is that it doesn’t matter all her
heirs and graces and titles
she’s got a [ __ ] she’s a sexual and that
levels them
but one of the pivotal scenes is where
melis tries to tell her what [ __ ] means
i won’t do the accent nae nae [ __ ]
only what animals do but [ __ ] a lot
more than that
it’s the just thou see there’s a lot
more beside an animal aren’t there
even to [ __ ] [ __ ] that’s the beauty of
the lass
[ __ ] that’s the beauty of the lass i
love that
now despite a jury that agreed a work
stuffed full of [ __ ] does have artistic
merit
and they allowed it to be published and
you can see the pictures of the people
queuing around the streets to get their
hands on this book once it was
[ __ ] never really made it back into the
mainstream
feminists have maintained a rather
uneasy relationship
with [ __ ] this is judy chicago she led
what was called the [ __ ] art movement of
the 1970s
it first turned up in a film a
mainstream cinema in 1971 in carnal
knowledge with jack nicholson
who screamed at a woman that she is a
ball-busting son of a [ __ ] [ __ ]
or words to that effect and in the
exorcist as well
it appears in the vagina monologues 1996
i think it was with eva ensler when she
talks about reclaiming
[ __ ] but it’s still not off the
linguistic naughty step
despite all of this work [ __ ] today
it was it was finally admitted
to the oxford english dictionary despite
having been around for thousands
of years in the 70s and then in 2014
they relented a little bit more and they
added [ __ ] cuntish counted
hunting so we all know exactly what that
means
the ofcom the uh regulator for uk
tv censorship in 2016 released a poll of
what they regarded to be the most
offensive words
and [ __ ] was bang up there it was on top
it is still regarded as a horrendously
offensive words
but here’s what i want to leave you with
what do you call yours
because as far as i can see words for
vulva or [ __ ]
fall into a few categories we’ve got
child like
a tuppence a twinkie a foo for minky and
mary
very medical a vulva podendum vagina
slightly detached down there it’s down
there
bits special area
violent axe wound penis fly trap gash or
a growler
someone told me well the taxi driver on
my way in told me that it’s glaswegian
slang for cunnilingus is growling
at the badger which i’ll leave that with
you
or they just tend to be unpleasant
horrible images of
fish and meat and general putrescence
fish taco bacon sandwich
badly stuffed kebab bearded clam etc
etc are these better alternatives
to [ __ ] but i think the reason that
we’re not prepared and we can’t handle
[ __ ] is because we can’t handle [ __ ]
generally while it’s been linguistically
sanitized
culturally the only [ __ ] we seem to be
okay with the ones that have been
plucked and buffed and waxed and glued
and covered in glitter
it’s a virgil by the way the vagina
plaster disney
business is booming you can have your
labia cut off you can have your hymen
rebuilt you can have your pelvic floor
re-sprung
are we this uncomfortable with the [ __ ]
actually as it is
it’s a seat of enormous awesome power it
can eat a penis and push out a baby it’s
not a twinkle
it is an old word it’s an offensive word
but it’s an ancient and honest one and
this is think this is the original word
everything else came after so welcome to
team [ __ ]