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From: jaap@haring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Re: Origin of that strongest of words
Message-ID: <309@haring.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Oct-84 00:36:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: haring.309
Posted: Wed Oct  3 00:36:36 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 05:01:40 EDT
References: <1536@uvacs.UUCP> <6046@mcvax.UUCP>
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 20
Apparently-To: rnews@turing.LOCAL

>I'm surprised to learn that most words in the English language come from
>"friden".

>On a more serious note, why doesn't it come from the Dutch "fokken" which
>means to breed?

According to "The Concise Oxford Dictionary" (6th edition, 1976) the
word "fuck" stems from the 16th Century, origin unknown. Since there was
a lot of contact between England and Holland that time, and "fokken"
was used a lot (and in certain parts of The Netherlands still is) for
breeding of animals and humans, I think "fokken" is a good candidate.
Also the spelling of Dutch in these times was even more flexible
nowadays, "focken" was quite acceptable during those days.

One thing that complicates the theory is that the current slang word
for sexual intercourse is "neuken", and was in that time an accepted word.
It turned into slang later. This happened with more Dutch words, first
official accepted and later, probably because changes in the society
didn't allow anymore to speak frankly about the subject, the words were
considered to be slang.