Dropping the F-Bomb

"It does not have the sting that it used to," he says. "For young people, it just doesn't have that much power for them."

The word has been around since at least the 15th century. The English word with which we are familiar is related to similar words found in the Germanic languages, such as Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and German. These words meant "to thrust" or "to strike" or "to copulate." The first known printed appearance, Sheidlower says, comes from a text around 1475, in a poem that more or less said the monks of Cambridge did not go to heaven because of their sexual dalliances with women. For the next four centuries it was almost always used in a literal sexual sense. The figurative uses so common today didn't arise until the late 19th century, Sheidlower says.

The word was not openly printed in the United States until 1926, when it appeared once in Howard Vincent O'Brien's memoir "Wine, Women and War," according to Sheidlower's book. After World War II, writer Norman Mailer negotiated his way around the taboo by using the made-up word "fug" in the dialogue of the book "The Naked and the Dead." This spring, Andrew Crocker, a Harvard senior, turned in his thesis on the use of the word in post-World War II America, and he relates the famous story that Tallulah Bankhead (or, in some tellings, Dorothy Parker, or Mae West) said to Mailer at a cocktail party, "So you're the man who can't spell f -- ." Nice line, though Crocker says it's apocryphal.

James Jones used the word in his 1951 novel "From Here to Eternity." Like Mailer, Jones was reflecting the speech of American soldiers during the war. This point is key: The word was routinely used by real people, it just was rarely published and never broadcast. It was still taboo.

Liberating the word became a dubious triumph of the 1960s counterculture. At Woodstock, Country Joe and the Fish led a rousing cheer that began with "Give me an F!" and continued on through "K," finally asking, "What's that spell?" Now it sounds silly. Wow. They said a bad word out loud! What revolutionaries!

Soon, the word became common in popular culture, but still retained some of its sizzle. Consider the classic line by Otter in the 1978 movie "Animal House" after the fraternity brothers have wrecked Flounder's car: "Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You [effed] up -- you trusted us!" Drift a few years forward to 1989, and Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," and the word gets a real workout in the mouth of Sal, who at one point uses it six times in the space of five sentences.

Today it still has enough power to be memorable, as when Jack and Miles in the movie "Sideways" discuss the possibility of drinking merlot:

Jack: "If they want to drink merlot, we're drinking merlot."

Miles: "No, if anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any [expletive deleted] merlot!"

Just to clarify: This is funny not because Miles used a bad word, but because of the juxtaposition of the bad word with the one that follows. We do not expect to hear a person express such strong feelings -- to the point of vulgarity -- when discussing a particular kind of grape .

We must not overharvest the swear words that are part of the commons of our language. It is an adults-only commons, of course. Kids need to be told that they still can't use it. How can a 13-year-old be transgressively vulgar with the word if his 5-year-old sister already uses it? This word is supposed to be a reward of adulthood. We have to conserve it, so that our children and our children's children can use it when we're gone.

There is a wonderful scene in the 1987 movie "Hope and Glory." A gang of boys is rambling through the rubble of London during the Blitz. The new boy, Bill, wants to join. They ask if he knows any swear words. He says he does. Say them, the boys insist. He hesitates. He admits finally that he knows only one swear word. After much delay and agonizing, he says it, loudly.

The word.

The other boys are shocked into silence. "That word is special," the gang leader finally says. "That word is only for something really important."

Precisely.

achenbachj@washpost.com

Joel Achenbach is a staff writer for the Washington Post magazine.