by Jesse Sheidlower at Literary Hub: The word fuck is of Germanic origin. It is related to words in several other Germanic languages, such as Dutch, German, Norwegian, and Swedish, that have sexual meanings as well as meanings like “to strike” or “to move back and forth.” The English word is the earliest recorded member of this family, but this does not imply that the other languages borrowed the form from English; rather, the words are all cognate.
Ultimately these words are members of a group of loosely related verbs having the structural form f plus a short vowel plus a stop (a consonant such as k, d, g, or t, in which the flow of air from the mouth is briefly interrupted), often with an l or r somewhere in between. These words have the basic meaning “to move back and forth,” and often the figurative sense “to cheat.” English examples of this family—all arriving later than fuck—are fiddle, fidget, flit, flip, flicker, and frig.
Fuck has no connection to some superficially similar words in other languages—Latin futuere, and its French derivative foutre. Though the Latin word is vulgar and means “to copulate,” it is almost certainly not related to fuck. Theories attempting to tie fuck to words in other languages, sometimes via a proposed Indo-European root meaning “to strike,” are possible, but for now remain uncertain.
Nor is fuck an “Anglo- Saxon” word—that term refers to the earliest period of English (now called Old English by scholars), before around 1100 A.D., and fuck is simply not found this early.
There are various claims that certain words in Middle English represent early examples of fuck, but these are usually unlikely. For example, Carl Darling Buck, in his 1949 Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages, cited a 1278 example of the name “John le Fucker.”
But he did not cite the source of this name, and no one has found a reference to it. More important, even if the source is authentic, there are many other possibilities for the name (the word fulcher “soldier,” or a misreading of the name Tucker, are the most likely).
However, if the bird name windfucker noun (or fuckwind noun) is ultimately related to fuck, it is interesting to note the name Ric Wyndfuk and Ric Wyndfuck de Wodehous, found from 1287 in documents related to Sherwood Forest, which may show another form of the bird name. Use of the word in the sense “to strike” could perhaps also be reflected by the surname Fuckebegger (also 1287); compare the Anglo-Norman surname Butevilein (literally “strike the churl or wretch”), found in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Two recent discoveries have changed our understanding of the word’s earliest history in English. The historian Paul Booth found court records from Cheshire in 1310 and 1311 concerning a man named Roger Fuckebythenavele, who was charged with a serious (though unspecified) criminal offense.
As authorities tried to apprehend him, his name entered the records several times over the course of many months, showing that this was a real name rather than a one-off joke. The most plausible interpretation would seem to be sexual, with Roger either believing that copulation should be done through or next to a partner’s navel, or having attempted such an act.
And in 1373, a charter from Bristol gives us an unusual placename: a field called Fockynggroue, i.e. “Fucking Grove.” While there are other interpretations, “a grove where one copulates” is the most likely, and is supported by various parallels.
More here.
