Overview
Fuck is an English-language profanity which often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to around 1475 CE. In modern usage, the term fuck and its derivatives (such as fucker and fucking) are used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an interjection or an adverb. There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as compounds that incorporate it, such as motherfucker, fuckwit, fuckup, fucknut, fucktard, and fuck off.
Offensiveness
It is unclear whether the word has always been considered a pejorative or, if not, when it first came to be used to describe (often in an extremely angry, hostile or belligerent manner) unpleasant circumstances or people in an intentionally offensive way, such as in the term motherfucker, one of its more common usages in some parts of the English-speaking world. Some English-speaking countries censor it on television and radio. Andrea Millwood Hargrave's 2000 study of the attitudes of the British public found that fuck was considered the third-most-severe profanity, and its derivative motherfucker second. Cunt was considered the most severe.
Nevertheless, the word has increasingly become less of a pejorative and more publicly acceptable, an example of the "dysphemism treadmill" or semantic drift known as melioration, wherein former pejoratives become inoffensive and commonplace. Because of its increasing usage in the public forum, in 2005 the word was included for the first time as one of three vulgarities in The Canadian Press's Canadian Press Caps and Spelling guide. Journalists were advised to refrain from censoring the word but use it sparingly and only when its inclusion was essential to the story.
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