by Garrison Frost

The 1972 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has this to say about it: “For centuries, and still by a great majority, regarded as a taboo-word; until recent times not often recorded in print but frequent in coarse speech.”

Of course, there can be no doubt which word we’re talking about. It is THE word. The one your parents and teachers warned you not to even think, lest terrible things happen.

But where did this word come from? The OED says its origins are unknown, but others have taken some stabs.

Richard A Spears, in “Slang and Euphemism,” describes the word as “popularly regarded as the worst of the ‘dirty words’ and as the most reviled word in the English language.”

Spears adds that the most likely source for the words is the German word ficken, or “to strike.” He cites a less likely source as the Latin word pungo, “to prick.”

He also cites a few other possible sources, such as a truncation of the word fecund, or as an acronym of “fornication under consent of the king.”

Other acronyms which have been suggested over the years also include “for unlawful carnal knowledge” and “for use of carnal knowledge.”

Spears dates the word, as does the OED, to its earliest known appearance in print in 1503 in the north of England. Robert L. Chapman, editor of “Dictionary of American Slang,” dates the word back to the 1200s.

Although many would liken the word to the German ficken, others argue that the connection has yet to be proved. This is the opinion of the OED and Eric Partridge’s “A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Language.”

Partridge explains the word as a cognate of the Latin verb pungere and the Latin noun pugil — both of which mean “strike,” drawing a connection to “prick.”

And that’s about where the academics leave it. After all, they’ve got better things to do than find out the etymology of naughty words.

By the way, that first mention in 1503 came from a poet named Dunbar, who crafted the line: “Be his fieris he wald have fukkit.”

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