Cunt

For the novel by Stewart Home, see Cunt (novel)

Cunt is an English term that refers to the human female genitals; it is considered by many to be the most offensive word in the English language. In modern English, the word vagina is considered to be more polite, though strictly speaking this Latin word refers only to a specific part of the female genitalia, as does vulva. The earliest citation of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is a reference to the London street name "Gropecuntelane" dated to about 1230.

Usage

"Cunt" is also used as a term of abuse: in American English, it implies that the named person is extremely nasty and unpleasant in a way that exceeds the vehemence of the word "bitch". "Cunt" is generally considered the most offensive description one can bestow on a person. In British English it is mainly directed at men, and is considered an insulting swear-word, implying that the named person is extremely obnoxious and malicious.

Like many vulgar words, cunt owes some of its potency to its phonetic characteristics. Its monosyllabic nature, combined with the hard K sound at the beginning and the sharp T at the end make it well-suited for use as an epithet or interjection.

The word is considered by some commentators to be more offensive in the United States than it is in Commonwealth countries, where cunt is occasionally used as a jovial term of endearment (e.g. "he's a good cunt"). This usage is limited, however, and is not considered polite. Moreover, the word is given a fresh lease of life in such American TV shows as Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Sopranos, which delight in its shock value.

Some commentators argue that the growing acceptance, as they see it, of the word fuck in print and broadcast media, renders the word cunt the last genuinely unprintable and unsayable expletive in the mainstream media. The taboo status of the word has been the cause of many deliberate challenges: in January 2005, the BBC courted controversy after it broadcast Jerry Springer - The Opera on British television. The performance included the phrase "cunting, cunting, cunting, cunting cunt" (a description of the Devil). This echoed appearances in well-known US movies and TV shows. The horror movie, The Exorcist, included the line: "Do you know what she did, your cunting daughter?", while the Tom Selleck film An Innocent Man saw a female character referred to as "your crusading cunt of a wife", while the Al Pacino film Glengarry Glen Ross called Kevin Spacey "You stupid fucking cunt, you idiot!" The critically acclaimed HBO TV show The Sopranos also makes frequent use of the word; and an episode of the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm is devoted to the comical repercussions of its inadvertent use.

A derivative adjective, "cuntish", meaning "frustrating" or "awkward", appears in Hiberno-English. The word "cunty" is also used in the US comedy Entourage.

A known euphemism for the word, originating within the London area, but now having more widespread use, especially within the south of England, is the phrase 'see you next Tuesday'; C (see) U (you) Next Tuesday. An example of usage would be: "Oh that bloke is such a see you next Tuesday". Another was used by Australian TV personality Graham Kennedy, using Cockney-style rhyming slang to describe a newspaper reporter as a "little All Quiet On The Western", referring to All Quiet on the Western Front. Standard rhyming slang is "berk" (short for "Berkeley (or Berkshire) Hunt"). Another that has been used by sailors in the US Navy is "Civilian Under Naval Training."

Feminist viewpoints

Some feminists seek to reclaim cunt as an acceptable word for the female genitalia.[1]. Some abhor the word and regard it based on its more recent connotation as the degrading and misogynistic equivalent of the word nigger. Critics of the word claim that the lack of any comparable term for the male genitalia demonstrates a profound cultural contempt, not only for specific females, but for women in general. Defenders of the word argue that terms for male genitals are used in an equally insulting way, though they claim the degree of this "equivalence" differs between English speaking cultures (examples include "cock", "prick", "dick-head", "utter balls" (or "bollocks") [British], etc). Despite these criticisms, there is a small movement amongst some feminists that seek to reclaim cunt as an honorific, in much the same way that "queer" has been reclaimed by homosexuals.[2] Proponents include is Inga Muscio with her book, "Cunt: A Declaration of Independence" and Eve Ensler's monologue "Reclaiming Cunt" (from "The Vagina Monologues").

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†, Frisian kunte, and Dutch kut (while kont in Dutch means bum, strangely the Dutch word for 'cunt' the earlier mentioned 'kut' is considered to be considerably less offensive in the Dutch speaking areas than cunt is in the English speaking world). Its original derivation is an Old Germanic stem kunton. It arose by Grimm's law operating on the Indo-European root gen/gon = "create, become" seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Indo-European root g^wneH₂/guneH₂ = "woman" seen in gynaecology. Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus (vulva), French con, and Spanish coño have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus: cuneatus, wedge-shaped; cuneo v. fasten with a wedge; (figurative) to wedge in, squeeze in, leading to English words like cuneiform and cunnilingus.

It is worth quoting a scholarly reference: Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, New York: Greenwich House, Distributed by Crown Publishers, Inc. MCMLVIII, MCMLIX, MCMLXI, MCMLXVI, ISBN 0517414252, page 135.

cunt: ME cunte (occ counte), recorded once in OE: OFris kunte, akin to ON kunta, MLG-LG kunte, D kunte, MD conte; also to MF (and F) con, OF varr cun, cunne; like It conno, from L cunnus, s cun-. The presence of t in the Gmc has long puzzled the etymologists: even Walther von Wartburg aligns the Gmc kunta, kunte, with the L cunnus only under the aegis of a question-mark; for cunnus, E & M adduce the syn Gr kusthos and the Per kun, the posterior, but they omit to cite the Hit kun, tail; for kusthos, Hofmann proposes an orig *kuzdhos, with extended r *kus- or *keus- and with true IE r *ku- or *keu-, to hide or conceal, and he adduces L cutis, skin which has s cut-, extension of r *cu-, *ku-, the skin being a coverer.

But is it not probable that the word is of common Medit stock: Eg offers qefen-t, vagina, vulva, akin to the n-lacking Eg ka-t, vagina, vulva, mother, women collectively. There are also several Sem congnates. The basic idea is prob 'essential femineity'.

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 in what was supposedly a current London street name of "Gropecuntelane".

The word appears several times in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be thought of as obscene at this point, since it is used openly. 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" [3] [4]. However, in Chaucer's usage there seems to be an overlap between the words "cunt" and "quaint" (possibly derived from 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" (charming, appealing).

By Shakespeare's day, the word seems to have been thought of as obscene. Although Shakespeare doesn't use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still has fun with it, using wordplay to sneak it in. 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 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." A related scene occurs in Henry V, when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the "gros et impudique" English words "foot" and "gown", which her English teacher has mispronounced as "coun". Presumably Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard "foot" as "foutre" (French, "fuck") and "coun" as "con" (French, "cunt").

By the 17th century a softer form of the word, cunny, came into use. This was probably a derived from a pun on "coney", meaning "rabbit", rather as "pussy" is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Massinger: "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'") Largely because of this usage, the word "coney" to refer to rabbits changed pronunciation from short "o" (like money and honey) to long "o" (cone, as in Coney Island), and has now almost completely disappeared from most dialects of English, much in the same way that the word "pussy" is now rarely used to refer to a cat in America.

Similar word-play has been used more recently. The British band The Sex Pistols recorded a song entitled '"Pretty Vacant", pronounced pretty vay-khunt.

Double act Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are often credited with having made the word more acceptable and accessible in the UK in the 20th Century through their Derek and Clive dialogues. In one sketch called "This Bloke Came Up To Me", the word is used 31 times in the course of two minutes.

The first time the word was used on television was by Felix Dennis in 1970 on the The Frost Programme.

Other meanings

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

A cunt splice is a form of knot used in rigging on ships.

The Ashley Book of Knots ISBN 0385040253, by Clifford W. Ashley, frequently uses the word cuntline to refer to the spiral groove between strands of twisted cordage. The author never defines the term, but assumes that he would be understood. The book was first printed in 1944 and would have been censored at that time if the word had been considered offensive.

A Dictionary of Sea Terms, published in 1841, defines the cuntline differently, as "the space between the bilges of two casks, stowed side by side. Where one cask is set upon the cuntline between two others, they are stowed bilge and cuntline." The "bilge" of a barrel or cask is the widest point, so when stored together the two casks would produce a curved V-shaped gap.

The term cunt hair is used as a measurement in construction; an expansion of 'to move it a hair' or very small distance. A color may be added as an adjective to further define the degree of adjustment, such as RCH (red cunt hair as a coarse adjustment, a 'blonde' one would be a finer adjustment) [5] The term is also used liberally in restaurant kitchens. A prep cook may ask his Sous chef or head chef how thin he should slice a certain vegetable. The chef may respond "Thinner than a cunt hair!"

Testimonials

"I'm a really big fan of cunt over words like pussy, and especially, vagina. The word has this great guttural sound that lets you get right into it. Pussy and vagina are really dirty words – you only ever hear really greasy men saying things like that. Cunt lets women be vulgar without being derogatory."

Calista Flockhart, at a staging of The Vagina Monologues

"Those words ('bullshit', 'prick', 'pissed off', 'fuck you', and 'cunt') are now liberated from shame. They're in the dictionary now, finally. And the reason they came to the dictionary, finally, was through continual usage. Enough guys said to their wives 'YOU CUNT!' Pow! And that's why it's in the dictionary now: C-u-n-t."

Lenny Bruce, discussing the 1961 Webster's Third New International Dictionary

External links

Uses in popular culture

Cunt is also an album by Australian grindcore band Blood Duster.
Just Like a Cunt and A Cunt Like You, two songs by U.K. power electronics pioneers Whitehouse
Cunt, a term often used by U.S. riot grrl singer Jessicka (Scarling, Jack off Jill); "Cumdumpster" lyrics (Sexless Demons & Scars): "C-c-c-c-cumdumpster C-c-c-c-cunt, C-c-c-call me clever, Is that still ok?"
"I Might Be a Cunt, But I'm Not a Fucking Cunt", a 1998 song by Australian band TISM, who also released an album entitled Australia the Lucky Cunt (a play on the phrase "Australia the lucky country") in 1993.
Cunt was a fictional documentary about a hipster/media wannabe, Nathan Barley, listed in TVGoHome, a spoof television listings website. It was later formed the basis of a Channel 4 sitcom, Nathan Barley.
"Cunt" is used by the Australian artist Kevin Bloody Wilson in several songs, such as: "You Can't Say Cunt in Canada" and "I Had an Absolute Cunt of a Day".
Extensively used in The Exorcist.
Extensively used in the adaptation of John King's novel, The Football Factory (2004)
C.U.N.T. was a student magazine at University College Dublin in 1978. It stood for "Catholic University News and Times".
Anal Cunt is a U.S. grindcore band.
The Cants are an Australian band.
In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, "CUNT" is a well known name for the vehicle driven by local celebrity "Pimp Bob", who converted a 2003 Nissan Xterra into a moving metallic cut-out of the word "CUNT" to celebrate the launch of the Sabrina pornography videos.
Cult writer Henry Miller frequently used the word in his autobiographical novels, sometimes to refer to the female genitalia and sometimes to refer to a woman.
"Entrails Ripped From A Virgin's Cunt" is a song by the death metal band Cannibal Corpse
"Gilded Cunt" is a song from Cradle of Filth's 2004 album, Nymphetamine.