Cunt

This article is about the vulgarism. For other uses, see Cunt (disambiguation).

Cunt /ˈkʌnt/ is a vulgar term for female genitalia, and is also used as a term of disparagement. Reflecting different national usages, cunt is described as "an unpleasant or stupid person" in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, whereas Merriam-Webster indicates that it is a "usually disparaging and obscene" term for a woman[1] or an "offensive way to refer to a woman" in the United States.[2] The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English gives "a contemptible person".[3] When used with a positive qualifier (good, funny, clever, etc.) in Britain, New Zealand, and Australia, it can convey a positive sense of the object or person referred to.[4]

The earliest known use of the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was as a placename for the London street Gropecunt Lane, c. 1230. Use of the word as a term of abuse is relatively recent, dating from the late nineteenth century.[5] The word appears to have not been strongly taboo in the Middle Ages, but became taboo towards the end of the eighteenth century, and was then not generally admissible in print until the latter part of the twentieth century. The term has various derivative senses, including adjective and verb uses. Scholar Germaine Greer argues that cunt "is one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock."[6]

Etymology

The etymology of "cunt" is a matter of debate,[7] but most sources consider the word to have derived from a Germanic word (Proto-Germanic *kuntō, stem *kuntōn-), which appeared as kunta in Old Norse. Scholars are uncertain of the origin of the Proto-Germanic form itself.[8] There are cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish, Faroese and Nynorsk kunta; West Frisian and Middle Low German kunte; Middle Dutch conte; Dutch kut and kont; Middle Low German kutte; Middle High German kotze ("prostitute"); German kott, and perhaps Old English cot. The etymology of the Proto-Germanic term is disputed. It may have arisen by Grimm's law operating on the Proto-Indo-European root *gen/gon "create, become" seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷneh₂/guneh₂ "woman" (Greek: gunê, seen in gynaecology). Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus ("vulva"), and its derivatives French con, Spanish coño, and Portuguese cona, or in Persian kun (کون), have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus are cuneus ("wedge") and its derivative cunēre ("to fasten with a wedge", (figurative) "to squeeze in"), leading to English words such as cuneiform ("wedge-shaped"). In Middle English, cunt appeared with many spellings, such as coynte, cunte and queynte, which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation of the word.

The word in its modern meaning is attested in Middle English. Proverbs of Hendyng, a manuscript from some time before 1325, includes the advice:[9]

Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.
(Give your cunt wisely and make [your] demands after the wedding.)

Offensiveness

Generally

The word "cunt" is generally regarded in English-speaking countries as unsuitable for normal public discourse. It has been described as "the most heavily tabooed word of all English words",[10][11] although John Ayto, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Slang, says "nigger" is more taboo.[12]

Feminist perspectives

Some feminists of the 1970s sought to eliminate disparaging terms for women, including "bitch" and "cunt".[13] In the context of pornography, Catharine MacKinnon argued that use of the word acts to reinforce a dehumanisation of women by reducing them to mere body parts;[14] and in 1979 Andrea Dworkin described the word as reducing women to "the one essential – 'cunt: our essence ... our offence'".[14]

Despite criticisms, there is a movement among feminists that seeks to reclaim cunt not only as acceptable, but as an honorific, in much the same way that queer has been reappropriated by LGBT people and the word nigger has been by the black community.[15] Proponents include Inga Muscio in her book, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence[16] and Eve Ensler in "Reclaiming Cunt" from The Vagina Monologues.

Germaine Greer, who had previously published a magazine article entitled "Lady, Love Your Cunt",[17] discussed the origins, usage and power of the word in the BBC series Balderdash and Piffle. She suggested at the end of the piece that there was something precious about the word, in that it was now one of the few remaining words in English that still retained its power to shock. Greer also alludes to the fact that the word vagina, which is considered the non-vulgar term, was a Latin name given by male anatomists for all muscle coverings, meaning "sword-sheath". She considers it contentious as cunt has no such meaning, it simply refers to the entire female genitalia (she also mentions that vagina is applied purely to the internal canal).

Usage: pre-twentieth century

Cunt has been attested in its anatomical meaning since at least the 13th century. While Francis Grose's 1785 A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue listed the word as "C**T: a nasty name for a nasty thing",[18] it did not appear in any major English dictionary from 1795 to 1961, when it was included in Webster's Third New International Dictionary with the comment "usu. considered obscene". Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1972, which cites the word as having been in use since 1230 in what was supposedly a London street name of "Gropecunte Lane". It was, however, also used before 1230, having been brought over by the Anglo-Saxons, originally not an obscenity but rather a factual name for the vulva or vagina. Gropecunt Lane was originally a street of prostitution, a red light district. It was normal in the Middle Ages for streets to be named after the goods available for sale therein, hence the prevalence in cities having a medieval history of names such as "Silver Street" and "Fish Street". In some locations, the former name has been bowdlerised, as in the City of York, to the more acceptable "Grape Lane".[19]

The word appears several times in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be considered obscene at this point, since it is used openly.[20] A notable use is from the "Miller's Tale": "Pryvely he caught her by the queynte." The Wife of Bath also uses this term, "For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave/You shall have queynte right enough at eve ... What aileth you to grouche thus and groan?/Is it for ye would have my queynte alone?" In modernised versions of these passages the word "queynte" is usually translated simply as "cunt".[21][22] However, in Chaucer's usage there seems to be an overlap between the words "cunt" and "quaint" (possibly derived from the Latin for "known"). "Quaint" was probably pronounced in Middle English in much the same way as "cunt". It is sometimes unclear whether the two words were thought of as distinct from one another. Elsewhere in Chaucer's work the word queynte seems to be used with meaning comparable to the modern "quaint" (curious or old-fashioned, but nevertheless appealing).[23] This ambiguity was still being exploited by the 17th century; Andrew Marvell's ... then worms shall try / That long preserved virginity, / And your quaint honour turn to dust, / And into ashes all my lust in To His Coy Mistress depends on a pun on these two senses of "quaint".[24]

By Shakespeare's day, the word seems to have become obscene. Although Shakespeare does not use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still plays with it, using wordplay to sneak it in obliquely. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet, as the castle's residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play, Hamlet asks Ophelia, "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Ophelia replies, "No, my lord." Hamlet, feigning shock, says, "Do you think I meant country matters?" Then, to drive home the point that the accent is definitely on the first syllable of country, Shakespeare has Hamlet say, "That's a fair thought, to lie between maids' legs."[25] In Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V) the puritanical Malvolio believes he recognises his employer's handwriting in an anonymous letter, commenting "There be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps", unwittingly punning on "cunt" and "piss",[26] and while it has also been argued that the slang term "cut" is intended,[27] Pauline Kiernan writes that Shakespeare ridicules "prissy puritanical party-poopers" by having "a Puritan spell out the word 'cunt' on a public stage".[28] A related scene occurs in Henry V: when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the "gros, et impudique" words "foot" and "gown", which her teacher has mispronounced as "coun". It is usually argued that Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard "foot" as "foutre" (French, "fuck") and "coun" as "con" (French "cunt", also used to mean "idiot").[29] Similarly John Donne alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem The Good-Morrow, referring to sucking on "country pleasures".

The 1675 Restoration comedy The Country Wife also features such word play, even in its title.

By the 17th century a softer form of the word, "cunny", came into use. A well-known use of this derivation can be found in the 25 October 1668 entry of the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was discovered having an affair with Deborah Willet: he wrote that his wife "coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main (hand) in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...."[30]

Cunny was probably derived from a pun on coney, meaning "rabbit", rather as pussy is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Massinger (1583–1640): "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'")[31] Because of this slang use as a synonym for a taboo term, the word coney, when it was used in its original sense to refer to rabbits, came to be pronounced as /ˈkoʊni/ (rhymes with "phoney"), instead of the original /ˈkʌni/ (rhymes with "honey"). Eventually the taboo association led to the word "coney" becoming deprecated entirely and replaced by the word rabbit.[32][33][34][35]

Robert Burns (1759–1796) used the word in his Merry Muses of Caledonia, a collection of bawdy verses which he kept to himself and were not publicly available until the mid-1960s.[36] In "Yon, Yon, Yon, Lassie", this couplet appears: "For ilka birss upon her cunt, Was worth a ryal ransom".[37]

Usage: modern

In modern literature

James Joyce was one of the first of the major 20th-century novelists to put the word "cunt" into print. In the context of one of the central characters in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, Joyce refers to the Dead Sea and to

... the oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.[38]

Joyce uses the word figuratively rather than literally; but while Joyce used the word only once in Ulysses, with four other wordplays ('cunty') on it, D. H. Lawrence used the word ten times in Lady Chatterley's Lover, in a more direct sense.[39] Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley:

If your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after.

The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution for obscenity in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books.[40]

Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer uses the word extensively, ensuring its banning in Britain between 1934 and 1961[41] and being the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, 378 U.S. 577 (1964).

Samuel Beckett was an associate of Joyce, and in his Malone Dies (1956), he writes: "His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her cunt, that trump card of young wives."[42]

In Ian McEwan's 2001 novel Atonement, set in 1935, the word is used in a love letter mistakenly sent instead of a revised version, and although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.[43]

Usage by meaning

Term of abuse for people

As a derogatory term, it is comparable to prick and means "a fool, a dolt, an unpleasant person – of either sex".[44][45] This sense is common in New Zealand, British and Australian English, where it is usually applied to men[46] or as referring specifically to "a despicable, contemptible or foolish" man.[47] During the 1971 Oz trial for obscenity, prosecuting counsel asked writer George Melly "Would you call your 10-year-old daughter a cunt?" Melly replied "No, because I don't think she is."[48] In the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he does not like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, "Well, I don't want to break up the meeting or nothing, but she's something of a cunt, ain't she, Doc?"[49]

In American slang, the term can be used to refer to a woman, or "a fellow male homosexual".[50]

Other uses

The word is sometimes used as a general expletive to show frustration, annoyance or anger, for example "I've had a cunt of a day!" and "This will be a cunt [of a job] to finish".

In the Survey of English Dialects the word was recorded in some areas as meaning "the vulva of a cow". This was pronounced as [kʌnt] in Devon, and [kʊnt] in the Isle of Man, Gloucestershire and Northumberland. Possibly related was the word cunny [kʌni], with the same meaning, at Wiltshire.[51]

As a slang term it can be modified by a positive qualifier (funny, clever, etc.) in British, Irish, New Zealand, and Australian English, when referring to a person.[4] For example, "This is my mate Brian. He's a good cunt."

The word "cunty" is also known, although used rarely: a line from Hanif Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette is the definition of England by a Pakistani immigrant as "eating hot buttered toast with cunty fingers," suggestive of hypocrisy and a hidden sordidness or immorality behind the country's quaint façade. This term is attributed to British novelist Henry Green.[52]

Frequency of use

Frequency of use varies widely in the United States. According to research into American usage carried out in 2013 and 2014 by forensic linguist Jack Grieve of Aston University and others, including researchers from the University of South Carolina, based on a corpus of nearly 9 billion words in geotagged tweets, the word was most frequently used in New England and was least frequently used in the south-eastern states.[53][54] In Maine it was the most frequently used "cuss word" after "asshole".[55]

Usage in modern popular culture

Theatre

Theatre censorship was effectively abolished in the UK in 1968; prior to that all theatrical productions had to be vetted by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. English stand-up comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown claims that he was the first person to say the word on stage in the United Kingdom.[56]

In the 1996 play The Vagina Monologues the author, American writer Eve Ensler, says she has reclaimed the word and encourages the audience to repeat it with her. "Feeling a little irritated in the airport, just say 'cunt,' everything changes," she says. "Try it, go ahead, go ahead. Cunt. Cunt. Cunt."[57]

Television

Broadcast media are regulated for content, and media providers such as the BBC have guidelines as to how "cunt" and similar words should be treated.[58] In a survey of 2000 commissioned by the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority, "cunt" was regarded as the most offensive word which could be heard, above "motherfucker" and "fuck".[59] Nevertheless, there have been occasions when, particularly in a live broadcast, the word has been aired outside editorial control:

The first scripted uses of the word on British television occurred in 1979, in the ITV drama No Mama No, broadcast in 1979,[26][60] and by 2005, the Christ character in Jerry Springer – The Opera (BBC, 2005) suggesting that he might be gay was found more controversial than the chant "cunting, cunting, cunting, cunting cunt" (a description of the Devil).[64] The first scripted use on US television was on the Larry Sanders Show in 1992, and a notable use occurred in Sex and the City.[26]

In July 2007 BBC Three dedicated a full hour to the word in a detailed documentary (The 'C' Word) about the origins, use and evolution of the word from the early 1900s to the present day. Presented by British comedian Will Smith, viewers were taken to a street in Oxford once called "Gropecunt Lane" and presented with examples of the acceptability of "cunt" as a word.[65] In the US, an episode of the NBC TV show 30 Rock, titled "The C Word", centred around a subordinate calling protagonist Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) a "cunt" and her subsequent efforts to regain her staff's favour. Jane Fonda did utter the word on a live airing of the Today Show, a network broadcast-TV news program, in 2008 when being interviewed about The Vagina Monologues.[66]

Radio

On 6 December 2010 on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, James Naughtie referred to the British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt as Jeremy Cunt;[67] he covered this up explaining it as being a cough but still ended up giggling over his words while announcing the rest of the items in the next hour. A little later Andrew Marr referred to the incident during Start the Week where it was said that "we won't repeat the mistake" whereupon Marr slipped up in the same way as Naughtie had. The use of the word was described by the BBC as being "...an offensive four-letter word..."

Film

The first use of the word in mainstream cinema occurs in Carnal Knowledge (1971), in which Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) asks, "Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?" Nicholson later used it again, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).[68] Two early films by Martin Scorsese, Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), use the word in the context of the virgin-whore dichotomy, with characters using it after they were rejected (in Mean Streets) or after they have slept with the woman (in Taxi Driver).[69]

In notable instances, the word has been edited out. Saturday Night Fever (1977) was released in two versions, "R" (Restricted) and "PG" (Parental Guidance), the latter omitting or replacing dialogue such as Tony Manero (John Travolta)'s comment to Annette (Donna Pescow), "It's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt".[26] This differential persists, and in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Agent Starling (Jodie Foster) meets Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) for the first time and passes the cell of "Multiple Miggs", who says to Starling: "I can smell your cunt." In versions of the film edited for television the word is dubbed with the word scent.[70] The 2010 film Kick-Ass caused a controversy when the word was used by Hit-Girl because the actress playing the part, Chloë Grace Moretz, was only 11 at the time of filming.[71][72]

In Britain, use of the word "cunt" may result in an "18" rating from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), and this happened to Ken Loach's film Sweet Sixteen, because of an estimated twenty uses of "cunt".[73] Still, the BBFC's guidelines at "15" state that "the strongest terms (for example, 'cunt') may be acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable."[74] The 2010 Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was given a "15" rating despite containing seven uses of the word.[75]

Comedy

In their Derek and Clive dialogues, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, particularly Cook, arguably made the word more accessible in the UK; in the 1976 sketch "This Bloke Came Up To Me", "cunt" is used approximately thirty-five times.[76] The word is also used extensively by British comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown, which ensures that his stand-up act has never been fully shown on UK television.[56]

Australian stand-up comedian, Rodney Rude frequently refers to his audiences as "cunts" and makes frequent use of the word in his acts, which got him arrested in Queensland and Western Australia for breaching obscenity laws of those states in the mid-1980s. Australian comedic singer Kevin Bloody Wilson makes extensive use of the word, most notably in the songs Caring Understanding Nineties Type and You Can't Say "Cunt" in Canada.[77]

The word appears in American comic George Carlin's 1972 standup routine on the list of the seven dirty words that could not, at that time, be said on American broadcast television, a routine that led to a U. S. Supreme Court decision.[78] While some of the original seven are now heard on US broadcast television from time to time, "cunt" remains generally taboo except on premium paid subscription cable channels like HBO or Showtime. Comedian Louis C. K. uses the term frequently in his stage act as well as on his television show Louie on FX network, which bleeps it out.

Popular music

The 1977 Ian Dury and The Blockheads album, New Boots and Panties used the word in the opening line of the track "Plaistow Patricia", thus: "Arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks",[79] particularly notable as there is no musical lead-in to the lyrics.

In 1979, during a concert at New York's Bottom Line, Carlene Carter introduced a song about mate-swapping called "Swap-Meat Rag" by stating, "If this song don't put the cunt back in country, I don't know what will."[80] The comment was quoted widely in the press, and Carter spent much of the next decade trying to live the comment down.[81] However use of the word in lyrics is not recorded before the Sid Vicious's 1978 version of "My Way", which marked the first known use of the word in a UK top 10 hit, as a line was changed to "You cunt/I'm not a queer".[82] The following year, "cunt" was used more explicitly in the song "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Marianne Faithfull's album Broken English:

Why'd ya do it, she screamed, after all we've said,

Every time I see your dick I see her cunt in my bed.[83]

The Happy Mondays song, "Kuff Dam" (i.e. "Mad fuck" in reverse), from their 1987 debut album, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), includes the lyrics "You see that Jesus is a cunt / And never helped you with a thing that you do, or you don't." Biblical scholar James Crossley, writing in the academic journal, Biblical Interpretation, analyses the Happy Mondays' reference to "Jesus is a cunt" as a description of the "useless assistance" of a now "inadequate Jesus".[84] A phrase from the same lyric, "Jesus is a cunt" was included on the notorious Cradle of Filth T-shirt which depicted a masturbating nun on the front and the slogan "Jesus is a cunt" in large letters on the back. The T-shirt was banned in New Zealand, in 2008.[85]

Liz Phair in Dance of Seven Veils on her 1993 album Exile in Guyville, uses the word in the line "I only ask because I'm a real cunt in spring".Liz Phair (22 June 1993). Exile in Guyville (Double LP) (vinyl). Matador Records, OLE 051-1. 

The word has been used by numerous non-mainstream bands, such as Australian band TISM, who released an extended play in 1993 Australia the Lucky Cunt (a reference to Australia's label the "lucky country"). They also released a single in 1998 entitled "I Might Be a Cunt, but I'm Not a Fucking Cunt", which was banned. The American grindcore band Anal Cunt, on being signed to a bigger label, shortened their name to AxCx.

The word appears once in Nicki Minaj's 2010 song "Roman's Revenge." The song includes the lyric "I'm a bad bitch, I'm a cunt."[86]

More recently, in 2012, the word appears at least 10 times in Azealia Banks' song "212". She is also known to refer to her fans on Facebook as "kuntz". Banks has said she is "tired" of defending her profanity-laden lyrics from critics, saying they reflect her everyday speech and experiences.[87]

Computer and video games

The 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the first video game to use the word,[88] only once (along with being the first in the series to use the words nigga, motherfucker, and cocksucker), used by the British character Kent Paul (voiced by Danny Dyer), who refers to Maccer as a "soppy cunt" in the mission Don Peyote.

The 2004 title The Getaway: Black Monday by SCEE used the word. It is used several times during the game.

In the 2008 title Grand Theft Auto IV (developed by Rockstar North and distributed by Take Two Interactive), available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, the word, amongst many other expletives, was used by James Pegorino after finding out that his personal bodyguard, who had turned states, who exclaimed "The world is a cunt!" while aiming a shotgun at the player.[89]

Other uses

Popular singer, Rihanna, has been outspoken about her use of the word cunt. She was photographed wearing a necklace spelling cunt in 2011. She later explained why she uses cunt in an interview with British Vogue. The Barbados-born singer said she "never knew" that the word was offensive until she moved to the United States.[90]

Linguistic variants and derivatives

Various euphemisms, minced forms and in-jokes are used to imply the word without actually saying it, thereby escaping obvious censure and censorship.

Spoonerisms and acronyms

Deriving from a dirty joke: "What's the difference between a circus and a strip club?"- "The circus has a bunch of cunning stunts...."[91] The phrase cunning stunt has been used in popular music. Its first documented appearance was by the English band Caravan who released the album Cunning Stunts in July 1975;[92] the title was later used by Metallica for a CD/Video compilation, and in 1992 the Cows released an album with the same title. In his 1980s BBC television programme, Kenny Everett played a vapid starlet, Cupid Stunt.[93]

There are numerous informal acronyms, including various apocryphal stories concerning academic establishments, such as the Cambridge University National Trust Society.[94]

There are many variants of the covering phrase "See you next Tuesday," including a play of that title by Ronald Harwood. A more recent acronym is "Can't Use New Technology" which is thought to originate from IT staff.

Puns

The name "Mike Hunt" is a frequent pun on my cunt; it has been used in a scene from the movie Porky's,[95] and for a character in the BBC radio comedy Radio Active in the 1980s.[96] "Has Anyone Seen Mike Hunt?" were the words written on a "pink neon sculpture" representing the letter C, in a 2004 exhibition of the alphabet at the British Library in collaboration with the International Society of Typographic Designers.[97][98]

As well as obvious references, there are also allusions. On I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Stephen Fry once defined countryside as the act of "murdering Piers Morgan".[99] In Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Donna and Gaz are perusing erotic novels when they come across The Count of Monte Cristo; Gaz helpfully informs Donna that 'it doesn't say Count'.[100] Similarly, in an episode of Spaced, Sophie tells Tim that she can't see him as there's been a misprint on the title of one of the magazines she works on – Total Cult.[101] In all these uses, the audience are left to make the connection.

Even Parliaments are not immune from punning uses; as recalled by former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam:

Never in the House did I use the word which comes to mind. The nearest I came to doing so was when Sir Winton Turnbull, a member of the cavalleria rusticana, was raving and ranting on the adjournment and shouted: "I am a Country member". I interjected "I remember". He could not understand why, for the first time in all the years he had been speaking in the House, there was instant and loud applause from both sides.[102]

and Mark Lamarr used a variation of this same gag on BBC TV's Never Mind the Buzzcocks. "Stuart Adamson was a Big Country member... and we do remember".[103]

Rhyming slang

Several celebrities have had their names used as euphemisms, including footballer Roger Hunt,[104] actor Gareth Hunt,[105][106][107] singer James Blunt,[97] politician Jeremy Hunt,[108] and 1970s motor-racing driver James Hunt, whose name was once used to introduce the British radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue as "the show that is to panel games what James Hunt is to rhyming slang".[97]

A canting form of some antiquity is berk, short for "Berkeley Hunt" or "Berkshire Hunt",[109][110] and in a Monty Python sketch, an idioglossiac man replaces the initial "c" of words with "b", producing "silly bunt". Scottish comedian Chic Murray claimed to have worked for a firm called "Lunt, Hunt & Cunningham".[111]

Derived meanings

The word "cunt" forms part of some technical terms used in seafaring and other industries.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ "cunt", Dictionary – Merriam-Webster online (Merriam-Webster), retrieved 2013-09-13
  2. ↑ "cunt", Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary (Merriam-Webster), retrieved 2013-09-13
  3. ↑ "Cunt". Macquarie Dictionary. Macmillan. Retrieved 25 June 2014. (subscription required (help)).
  4. 1 2 For example, Glue by Irvine Welsh, p.266, "Billy can be a funny cunt, a great guy..."
  5. 1 2 3 Morton, Mark (2004). The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex. Toronto, Canada: Insomniac Press. ISBN 978-1-894663-51-9.
  6. ↑ "Balderdash & Piffle". 2006-02-06. [[BBC Three (former)|]]. Missing or empty |series= (help)
  7. ↑ Wajnryb, Ruth (2005). Language Most Foul. Australia: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 1-74114-776-X.
  8. ↑ "Cunt". Online Etymological Dictionary. Retrieved 2008-03-06.
  9. ↑ Unknown (2001). An Old English Miscellany Containing a Bestiary, Kentish Sermons... Delaware: Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 0-543-94116-7.
  10. ↑ Rawson, Henry (1991). A Dictionary of Invective. London: Robert Hale Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7090-4399-7.
  11. ↑ "TV's most offensive words". The Guardian (London). November 21, 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  12. ↑ Margolis, Jonathan (November 21, 2002). "Expletive deleted". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2008-06-09. Nigger is far more taboo than fuck or even cunt. I think if a politician were to be heard off-camera saying fuck, it would be trivial, but if he said nigger, that would be the end of his career.
  13. ↑ Johnston, Hank; Bert Klandermans (1995). Social Movements and Culture. Routledge. p. 174. ISBN 1-85728-500-X.
  14. 1 2 Lacombe, Dany (1994). Blue Politics: Pornography and the Law in the Age of Feminism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 27. ISBN 0-8020-7352-2.
  15. ↑ "Penn State Feminists Stage X-Rated Event on Students' Dime". Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2008-03-06.
  16. ↑ "Cunt: A Declaration of Independence". Retrieved 2008-03-06.
  17. ↑ anthologized in Germaine Greer, The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings, (1986)
  18. ↑ Grose, Francis (1788). A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London: S. Hooper. C**T. ... a nasty name for a nasty thing (immediately following Cunny-thumbed)
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