Cunt

Cunt

Cunt is a vulgar term that refers to the human female genitals. Presumably once the standard English word for the vagina, it is now used only as a coarse colloquialism. It is also used as a term of abuse, particularly when used by a man to describe a woman, as in "she's a real cunt." It can also be used more abstractly, as in "I've had a cunt of a day." The word is generally considered to be extremely offensive, although equivalent words referring to the penis (such as "prick") are used more freely and have less taboo attached to them.

With the growing acceptance of the word fuck in print and broadcast media, cunt is the last genuinely unprintable and unsayable word in mainstream media. There is, however, a small movement amongst some feminists that seek to reclaim cunt as an acceptable word, in much the same way that "queer" has been reclaimed by homosexuals.

Table of contents

1 History
2 Related Topics
3 External links
4 Further reading

History

Cunt is an old Germanic word, and appeared as cunte in Middle English and kunta in Old Norse. It has cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish and Norwegian kunta and the Frisian kunte. Its original derivation is an Old Germanic stem kunton.

Cunt has been in common use in English since at least the 13th century. It did not appear in any major dictionary of the English language 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.

Although Shakespeare doesn't use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still has fun with it, using word play to sneak it in. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 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 of course, 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." Also see Twelfth Night (Act II Scene V): "There be her very C's, her U's, and her T's: and thus makes she her great P's."

In a similar fashion, the British band The Sex Pistols recorded a song entitled Pretty Vacant, pronounced pretty vay-khunt. One of the first persons to use the word on British television was the ITN news reader Trevor MacDonald, who accidentally mispronounced Kent.