Cunt
Encyclopedia
Cunt is a vulgarism
, primarily referring to the female genitalia, specifically the vulva
, and including the cleft of Venus. The earliest citation of this usage in the 1972 Oxford English Dictionary
, c 1230, refers to the London
street known as Gropecunt Lane
. Scholar Germaine Greer
has said that "it is one of the few remaining words in the English language
with a genuine power to shock."
Cunt is also used informally as a derogatory epithet
in referring to a person of either sex, but this usage is relatively recent, dating back only as far as the late nineteenth century. Reflecting different national usages, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary
defines cunt as "an unpleasant or stupid person", whereas Merriam-Webster
has a usage of the term as "usually disparaging & obscene: woman", noting that it is used in the US as "an offensive way to refer to a woman"; the Macquarie Dictionary
of Australian English
defines it as "a despicable man", however when used with a positive qualifier (good, funny, clever, etc.) in countries such as Britain
, New Zealand
and Australia
, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person referred to.For example, Glue by Irvine Welsh
, p.266, "Billy can be a funny cunt, a great guy..."
The word appears to have been in common usage from the Middle Ages
until the eighteenth century. After a period of disuse, usage became more frequent in the twentieth century, in parallel with the rise of popular literature and pervasive media. The term also has various other derived uses and, like fuck
and its derivatives, has been used mutatis mutandis
as noun, pronoun, adjective, participle
and other parts of speech.
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. In Middle English
, it appeared with many spellings, such as coynte, cunte and queynte, which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation
of the word. There are cognate
s in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish
, Faroese
and Nynorsk
kunta; West Frisian
and Middle Low German
kunte; Middle Dutch
conte; Dutch
kut; 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,Persian: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).
The word in its modern meaning is attested in Middle English. Proverbs of Hendyng
, a manuscript
from some time before 1325, includes the advice:
as unsuitable for normal public discourse. It has been described as "the most heavily taboo
ed word of all English words." John Ayto, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Slang
, has disputed this, writing: Use of the word is also documented as the argot
of some sections of society and in recent years attempts have been made to mitigate its connotation
s by promoting positive uses.
s of the 1970s sought to eliminate disparaging terms for women, including "bitch" and "cunt". 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; and in 1979 Andrea Dworkin
described the word as reducing women to "the one essential – 'cunt: our essence ... our offence'".
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. Proponents include Inga Muscio
in her book, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence
and Eve Ensler
in "Reclaiming Cunt" from The Vagina Monologues
.
The word was reclaimed by Angela Carter
, who used it in the title story of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
; a female character described female genitalia in a pornography book: "her cunt a split fig below the great globes of her buttocks".
Germaine Greer, who had previously published a magazine article entitled "Lady, Love Your Cunt", 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.
's 1785 A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue listed the word as "C**T: a nasty name for a nasty thing", 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 London
street name of "Gropecunte Lane". It was, however, also used before 1230, having been brought over by the Anglo-Saxon
s, 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".
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. 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". 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" (charming, appealing).
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, 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 Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps." 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". 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"). 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 in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...."
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
: "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'") 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 ˈ (rhymes with "phoney"), instead of the original /ˈkʌni/ (rhymes with "honey"). Eventually the taboo association led to the word "coney" becoming depreciated entirely and replaced by the word rabbit.
Robert Burns
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. In "Yon, Yon, Yon, Lassie", this couplet appears: "For ilka birss upon her cunt, Was worth a ryal ransom".
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
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. Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley: The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution for obscenity
in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books
.
Henry Miller
's novel Tropic of Cancer
uses the word extensively, ensuring its banning in Britain between 1934 and 1961 and being the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, .
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."
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.
, the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he doesn't like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, "she's something of a cunt, ain't she, Doc?" It can also be used to imply that the sexual act is the primary function of a woman; for example, see below in relation to Saturday Night Fever
.
During the UK Oz
trial for obscenity in 1971, 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."
's 1929 book The Middle Parts of Fortune, set in World War I
, is a vernacular
account of the lives of ordinary soldiers and describes regular use of the word by British Tommies. The word is invariably used to describe men:
Whilst normally derogatory in English-speaking countries, the word has an informal use, even being used as a term of endearment. Like the word fuck, use between youths is not uncommon, as exemplified by its use in the film Trainspotting
, where it is an integral part of the common language of the principal characters.
to show frustration, annoyance or anger, for example "I've had a cunt of a day!" and "This is a cunt to finish".
Australians have a habit of pairing the word with another to give a more specific meaning such as "cunt-rash" (literally, a visible disorder of the female genitalia; normally a general insult). The phrase "sick cunt" or "mad cunt" is sometimes used as a compliment by such sub-groups as surfers or the metal/hardcore music scene, although the term originated within immigrant groups who combined their use of the term "sick" with what they saw as a typically Aussie expletive.
As a slang
term with a positive qualifier (funny, clever, etc.) in countries such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand
and Australia
, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person referred to.
A modern derivative adjective
, cuntish (alternatively, cuntacious), meaning frustrating, awkward, or (when describing behavior) selfish, is increasingly used in England and has begun to appear in other countries, including Scotland and Ireland.
"Cunting" is routinely used as an intensifying modifier
, much like "fucking". It can also be used as a slang term for criticism, as in "Did you see the cunting he got for saying that?"
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
.
"Cunted" can mean to be extremely under the influence of drink and/or drugs.
In this sense the word is used to describe crude excess. An example of 'cunt' used as a simile to express an intense condition of bawdy, belligerent, antagonistic, or drunken behaviour, would be to describe another (or oneself) as behaving 'like a cunt'. This characterisation can be further qualified; 'like a total cunt', implying that the state of being like a cunt can have greater extremes: 'like a total shit fuck bastard cunt', for example. Such syntax
though is rare.
An example in modern film script evoking 'cunt' as a simile of crude excess, and used with frank effect, is the 2000 British Film, Sexy Beast
, Directed by Jonathan Glazer
. In the film Don Logan, played by Ben Kingsley
, arrives at the home of ex-con Garry 'Gal' Dove (Ray Winstone
) by taxi, and as he steps from the car delivers his opening line; "Gotta change my shirt, it's sticking to me. I'm sweatin' like a cunt".
In gay slang
the term is used to describe something or someone being extremely original, impressive, or fantastic in regard to style (fashion or music) or demeanor. Both "cunt" and "cunty" are used interchangeably, often in adjective form. Originating in Ball culture
, the term was popularized by the song "Cunty (The Feeling)" by drag performer Kevin Aviance
. 1
in the UK in 1968; prior to that all theatrical productions had to be vetted by the Lord Chamberlain's Office
. This relaxation made possible UK productions such as the musical Hair
and Oh! Calcutta!
. But "cunt" was not uttered on a British stage for some years.
, Independent Television Commission
, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority
, "cunt" was regarded as the most offensive word which could be heard, above "motherfucker
" and "fuck
". Nevertheless, there have been occasions when, particularly in a live broadcast, the word has been aired outside editorial control:
However "cunt" has crossed over from accidental to purposeful use:
In the United States
the broadcast use of "cunt" is still rare; nevertheless, the word has slowly infiltrated into broadcasting:
Radio 4
Today programme, James Naughtie
referred to the British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt as Jeremy Cunt; 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..."
(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?" Its subsequent use has been limited to films restricted to adult audiences, such as The Exorcist
(1973) in which Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran
) addresses the butler, Karl (Rudolf Schündler): "Cunting Hun
! Bloody damn butchering Nazi pig!" and Taxi Driver
(1976) in which Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro
) describes himself as "A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up."
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." 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.
In Britain, the word "cunt" remains perhaps the only word that can alone result in an "18" rating from the British Board of Film Classification
. Ken Loach
's film Sweet Sixteen
was given an "18" in 2002, ensuring that young people of the age depicted in the film were unable to view it legally, because of an estimated twenty uses of "cunt". 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." The 2010 Ian Dury
biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
was given a "15" rating despite containing seven uses of the word.
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 over thirty times. 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.
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-80's. 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.
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. While some of the original seven are now heard on US broadcast television from time to time, "cunt" remains generally taboo except for on premium paid subscription cable channels like HBO or Showtime.
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." The comment was quoted widely in the press, and Carter spent much of the next decade trying to live the comment down. However use of the word in lyrics is not recorded before the Sid Vicious
' 1978 version of My Way
, which marked the first known use of the word in a UK Top Ten hit, as a line was changed to "You cunt/I'm not a queer". The following year, "cunt" was used more explicitly in the song "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Marianne Faithfull
's album Broken English:
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". 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.
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.
was the first video game to use the word, 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".
In the 2004 title The Getaway: Black Monday
by SCEE
was a videogame to use the word. It is used several times during the game.
In the 2008 title Grand Theft Auto IV
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.
s, minced
forms and in-joke
s are used to imply the word without actually saying it, thereby escaping obvious censure and censorship.
who released the album Cunning Stunts
in July 1975; 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, and in 2005 comedian Al Murray
has hosted a British television comedy game show
, Fact Hunt
.
There are numerous informal acronyms, including various apocryphal stories concerning academic establishments, such as the Cambridge University National Trust Society.
There are many variants of the covering phrase "See you next Tuesday", including a play of that title by Ronald Harwood
.
, and for a character in the BBC
radio comedy Radio Active in the 1980s. "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
.
Apart from more directly obvious references, there have been allusions. Stephen Fry
once famously defined countryside on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
as the act of "murdering Piers Morgan
". 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'. 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. 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
:
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".
, actor Gareth Hunt
, singer James Blunt
, 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".
A canting
form of some antiquity is berk, short for "Berkeley Hunt
" or "Berkshire Hunt", and in a Monty Python
sketch, an idioglossia
c 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".
Vulgarism
A vulgarism , also called scurrility, is a colloquialism of an unpleasant action or unrefined character, which substitutes a coarse, indecorous word where the context might lead the reader to expect a more refined expression.-See also:*Euphemism*Grotesque body*Ribaldry, scatology, toilet...
, primarily referring to the female genitalia, specifically the vulva
Vulva
The vulva consists of the external genital organs of the female mammal. This article deals with the vulva of the human being, although the structures are similar for other mammals....
, and including the cleft of Venus. The earliest citation of this usage in the 1972 Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
, c 1230, refers to the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
street known as Gropecunt Lane
Gropecunt Lane
Gropecunt Lane was a street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages, believed to be a reference to the prostitution centred on those areas; it was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street's function or the economic activity taking place within it...
. Scholar Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
has said that "it is one of the few remaining words in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
with a genuine power to shock."
Cunt is also used informally as a derogatory epithet
Epithet
An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...
in referring to a person of either sex, but this usage is relatively recent, dating back only as far as the late nineteenth century. Reflecting different national usages, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary
Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English is a one-volume dictionary published by Oxford University Press. It is intended for a family or upper secondary school readership...
defines cunt as "an unpleasant or stupid person", whereas Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster
Merriam–Webster, which was originally the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is an American company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language .Merriam-Webster Inc. has been a...
has a usage of the term as "usually disparaging & obscene: woman", noting that it is used in the US as "an offensive way to refer to a woman"; the Macquarie Dictionary
Macquarie Dictionary
The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics...
of Australian English
Australian English
Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
defines it as "a despicable man", however when used with a positive qualifier (good, funny, clever, etc.) in countries such as Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person referred to.For example, Glue by Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
, p.266, "Billy can be a funny cunt, a great guy..."
The word appears to have been in common usage from the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
until the eighteenth century. After a period of disuse, usage became more frequent in the twentieth century, in parallel with the rise of popular literature and pervasive media. The term also has various other derived uses and, like fuck
Fuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...
and its derivatives, has been used mutatis mutandis
Mutatis mutandis
Mutatis mutandis is a Latin phrase meaning "by changing those things which need to be changed" or more simply "the necessary changes having been made"....
as noun, pronoun, adjective, participle
Participle
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
and other parts of speech.
Etymology
Although it has been said that "etymologists are unlikely to come to an agreement about the origins of 'cunt' any time soon," the word is most often thought to have derived from a GermanicGermanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
word (Proto-Germanic *kuntō, stem *kuntōn-), which appeared as kunta in Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
. Scholars are uncertain of the origin of the Proto-Germanic form itself. In Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, it appeared with many spellings, such as coynte, cunte and queynte, which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
of the word. There are cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
s in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Faroese
Faroese language
Faroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...
and Nynorsk
Nynorsk
Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
kunta; West Frisian
West Frisian language
West Frisian is a language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. West Frisian is the name by which this language is usually known outside the Netherlands, to distinguish it from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian,...
and Middle Low German
Middle Low German
Middle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League...
kunte; Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects which were spoken and written between 1150 and 1500...
conte; Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
kut; Middle Low German
Middle Low German
Middle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League...
kutte; Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
kotze (prostitute); German kott, and perhaps Old English cot. The etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
of the Proto-Germanic term is disputed. It may have arisen by Grimm's law
Grimm's law
Grimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
operating on the Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
*gen/gon 'create, become' seen in gonads, genital, gamete
Gamete
A gamete is a cell that fuses with another cell during fertilization in organisms that reproduce sexually...
, genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
, or the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷneH2/guneH2 'woman' (Greek gunê, seen in gynaecology
Gynaecology
Gynaecology or gynecology is the medical practice dealing with the health of the female reproductive system . Literally, outside medicine, it means "the science of women"...
). Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
cunnus (vulva), and its derivatives French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
con, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
coño, and Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
cona, or in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
kun,Persian: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
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
(wedge-shaped).
The word in its modern meaning is attested in Middle English. Proverbs of Hendyng
The Proverbs of Alfred
The Proverbs of Alfred is a collection of early Middle English sayings ascribed to King Alfred the Great , said to have been uttered at an assembly in Seaford, East Sussex.-Transmission:...
, a manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
from some time before 1325, includes the advice:
Generally
The word "cunt" is generally regarded in English-speaking countriesAnglosphere
Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...
as unsuitable for normal public discourse. It has been described as "the most heavily taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
ed word of all English words." John Ayto, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Slang
Slang dictionary
A slang dictionary is a reference book containing an alphabetical list of slang, vernacular vocabulary not generally acceptable in formal usage, usually including information given for each word, including meaning, pronunciation, and etymology. It can provide definitions on a range of slang from...
, has disputed this, writing: Use of the word is also documented as the argot
Argot
An Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...
of some sections of society and in recent years attempts have been made to mitigate its connotation
Connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood subjective cultural or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to the word's or phrase's explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation....
s by promoting positive uses.
Feminist perspectives
Some radical feministRadical feminism
Radical feminism is a current theoretical perspective within feminism that focuses on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society into a complex of relationships based on an assumption that "male supremacy" oppresses women...
s of the 1970s sought to eliminate disparaging terms for women, including "bitch" and "cunt". In the context of pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, Catharine MacKinnon
Catharine MacKinnon
Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist, scholar, lawyer, teacher and activist.- Biography :MacKinnon was born in Minnesota. Her mother is Elizabeth Valentine Davis; her father, George E. MacKinnon was a lawyer, congressman , and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit...
argued that use of the word acts to reinforce a dehumanisation of women by reducing them to mere body parts; and in 1979 Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women....
described the word as reducing women to "the one essential – 'cunt: our essence ... our offence'".
Despite criticisms, there is a movement among feminists that seeks to reclaim cunt not only as acceptable, but as an honorific
Honorific
An honorific is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term is used not quite correctly to refer to an honorary title...
, in much the same way that queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
has been reappropriated by LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
people. Proponents include Inga Muscio
Inga Muscio
Inga Muscio, , is a feminist, anti-racist writer and public speaker.She became famous after the publication of her 1998 Seal Press book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, which called for women to break down boundaries between themselves and their bodies, and each other.She is also the author of...
in her book, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence
Cunt: A Declaration of Independence
Cunt is a 1998 feminist book by Inga Muscio that called for a breakdown in the boundaries between women and in sexuality. In it, the writer hopes to reverse the negative connotations behind female genital euphemisms. The books traverses such subjects as menstruation, rape, and competition between...
and Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.- Personal life :...
in "Reclaiming Cunt" from The Vagina Monologues
The Vagina Monologues
The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the Off Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at AFRICA in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production which was produced by David Stone, Nina Essman, Dan Markley, The Araca Group, Willa Shalit, Mike Skipper...
.
The word was reclaimed by Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
, who used it in the title story of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
The Bloody Chamber
The Bloody Chamber is a collection of short fiction by Angela Carter. It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Gollancz and won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. All of the stories share a common theme of being closely based upon fairytales or folk tales...
; a female character described female genitalia in a pornography book: "her cunt a split fig below the great globes of her buttocks".
Germaine Greer, who had previously published a magazine article entitled "Lady, Love Your Cunt", discussed the origins, usage and power of the word in the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
series Balderdash and Piffle
Balderdash and Piffle
Balderdash and Piffle was a British television programme made by Takeaway Media for the BBC. Presented by Victoria Coren, it was a companion to the Oxford English Dictionary's Wordhunt, in which the writers of the dictionary asked the public for help in finding the origins and first known citations...
. 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.
Usage: pre-twentieth century
Cunt has been in common use in its anatomical meaning since at least the 13th century. While Francis GroseFrancis Grose
Francis Grose was an English antiquary, draughtsman, and lexicographer. He was born at his father's house in Broad Street, St-Peter-le-Poer, London, son of a Swiss immigrant and jeweller, Francis Jacob Grose , and his wife, Anne , daughter of Thomas Bennett of Greenford in Middlesex...
's 1785 A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue listed the word as "C**T: a nasty name for a nasty thing", 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
Webster's Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...
with the comment "usu. considered obscene". Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
was in 1972, which cites the word as having been in use since 1230 in what was supposedly a London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
street name of "Gropecunte Lane". It was, however, also used before 1230, having been brought over by the Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...
s, originally not an obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
but rather a factual name for the vulva or vagina. Gropecunt Lane
Gropecunt Lane
Gropecunt Lane was a street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages, believed to be a reference to the prostitution centred on those areas; it was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street's function or the economic activity taking place within it...
was originally a street of prostitution, a red light district
Red Light District
Red Light District may refer to:* Red-light district - a neighborhood where prostitution is common* The Red Light District - the title of the 2004 album by rapper Ludacris* Red Light District Video - a pornography studio based in Los Angeles, California...
. It was normal in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
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
Thomas Bowdler
Thomas Bowdler was an English physician who published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work, edited by his sister Harriet, intended to be more appropriate for 19th century women and children than the original....
, as in the City of York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
, to the more acceptable "Grape Lane".
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. A notable use is from the "Miller's Tale
The Miller's Prologue and Tale
"The Miller's Tale" is the second of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , told by the drunken miller Robyn to "quite" "The Knight'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". However, in Chaucer's usage there seems to be an overlap between the words "cunt" and "quaint" (possibly derived from the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
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
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
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
Word play
Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
to sneak it in obliquely. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, as the castle's residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play
Subplot
A subplot is a secondary plot strand that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance...
, 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
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
is definitely on the first syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
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 Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps." 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". 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"). Similarly John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem The Good-Morrow
The Good-Morrow
"The Good-Morrow" is a poem by John Donne, published in his 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets. Written while Donne was a student at Lincoln's Inn, the poem is one of his earliest works and is thematically considered to be the "first" work in Songs and Sonnets...
, referring to sucking on "country pleasures".
The 1675 Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama...
The Country Wife
The Country Wife
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title itself contains a lewd pun...
also features such word play
Word play
Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
, 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
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
. 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 in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...."
Cunny was probably derived from a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
on coney
Coney
-Places:* Coney Arm, a settlement in Newfoundland and Labrador* Coney Beach Pleasure Park, an amusement park in Wales* Coney's Castle, a fort in Dorset, England* Coneygar, a suburb of Bridport, Devon, England* Coneyhurst, a hamlet in West Sussex, England...
, meaning "rabbit
Rabbit
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...
", rather as pussy
Pussy
Pussy is an English word meaning:* Cat* The human female genitalia, for the slang term related to genital anatomy.* Pejoratively, cowardice or weakness as an insult in general- Etymology :The origins of the word are unknown...
is connected to the same term for a cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
. (Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.-Early life:The son of Arthur Massinger or Messenger, he was baptized at St....
: "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'") 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 ˈ (rhymes with "phoney"), instead of the original /ˈkʌni/ (rhymes with "honey"). Eventually the taboo association led to the word "coney" becoming depreciated entirely and replaced by the word rabbit.
Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
used the word in his Merry Muses of Caledonia
Caledonia
Caledonia is the Latinised form and name given by the Romans to the land in today's Scotland north of their province of Britannia, beyond the frontier of their empire...
, a collection of bawdy verses which he kept to himself and were not publicly available until the mid-1960s. In "Yon, Yon, Yon, Lassie", this couplet appears: "For ilka birss upon her cunt, Was worth a ryal ransom".
In modern literature
James JoyceJames Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
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
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
, Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in The Odyssey....
, Joyce refers to the Dead Sea
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...
and to
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
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
used the word ten times in Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
, in a more direct sense. Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley: The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution for obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
.
Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
's novel Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer (novel)
Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the...
uses the word extensively, ensuring its banning in Britain between 1934 and 1961 and being the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, .
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
was an associate of Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, and in his Malone Dies
Malone Dies
Malone Dies is a novel by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in 1951, in French, as Malone Meurt, and later translated into English by the author....
(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."
In Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
's 2001 novel Atonement
Atonement (novel)
Atonement is a 2001 novel by British author Ian McEwan.On a fateful day, a young girl makes a terrible mistake that has life-changing effects for many people...
, set in 1935, the word is used in a love letter
Love letter
A love letter is a romantic way to express feelings of love in written form. Delivered by hand, by mail or romantically left in a secret location, the letter may be anything from a short and simple message of love to a lengthy explanation of feelings...
mistakenly sent instead of a revised version, and although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.
Referring to women
In referring to a woman, cunt is an abusive term usually considered the most offensive word in that context and even more forceful than bitch. In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey....
, the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he doesn't like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, "she's something of a cunt, ain't she, Doc?" It can also be used to imply that the sexual act is the primary function of a woman; for example, see below in relation to Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 drama film directed by John Badham and starring: John Travolta as Tony Manero, an immature young man whose weekends are spent visiting a local Brooklyn discothèque; Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual friend; and Donna Pescow as Tony's former dance...
.
During the UK Oz
Oz (magazine)
Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London...
trial for obscenity in 1971, prosecuting counsel
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
asked writer George Melly
George Melly
Alan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.-Early life and career:He was born in Liverpool and was educated at Stowe...
"Would you call your 10-year-old daughter a cunt?" Melly replied "No, because I don't think she is."
Referring to men
Frederic ManningFrederic Manning
Frederic Manning was an Australian poet and novelist.-Biography:Born in Sydney, Manning was the son of local politician Sir William Patrick Manning. His family were Catholics, of Irish origin. A sickly child , Manning was educated exclusively at home...
's 1929 book The Middle Parts of Fortune, set in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, is a vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
account of the lives of ordinary soldiers and describes regular use of the word by British Tommies. The word is invariably used to describe men:
Whilst normally derogatory in English-speaking countries, the word has an informal use, even being used as a term of endearment. Like the word fuck, use between youths is not uncommon, as exemplified by its use in the film Trainspotting
Trainspotting (film)
Trainspotting is a 1996 British satirical/drama film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh. The movie follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life...
, where it is an integral part of the common language of the principal characters.
Other uses
The word is sometimes used as a general expletiveExpletive attributive
Expletive comes from the Latin verb explere, meaning "to fill", via expletivus, "filling out". It was introduced into English in the seventeenth century to refer to various kinds of padding—the padding out of a book with peripheral material, the addition of syllables to a line of poetry for...
to show frustration, annoyance or anger, for example "I've had a cunt of a day!" and "This is a cunt to finish".
Australians have a habit of pairing the word with another to give a more specific meaning such as "cunt-rash" (literally, a visible disorder of the female genitalia; normally a general insult). The phrase "sick cunt" or "mad cunt" is sometimes used as a compliment by such sub-groups as surfers or the metal/hardcore music scene, although the term originated within immigrant groups who combined their use of the term "sick" with what they saw as a typically Aussie expletive.
As a slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
term with a positive qualifier (funny, clever, etc.) in countries such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person referred to.
A modern derivative adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
, cuntish (alternatively, cuntacious), meaning frustrating, awkward, or (when describing behavior) selfish, is increasingly used in England and has begun to appear in other countries, including Scotland and Ireland.
"Cunting" is routinely used as an intensifying modifier
Adverbial phrase
An adverbial phrase is a linguistic term for a group of two or more words operating adverbially, when viewed in terms of their syntactic function.Compare the following sentences:*I'll go to bed soon.*I'll go to bed in an hour....
, much like "fucking". It can also be used as a slang term for criticism, as in "Did you see the cunting he got for saying that?"
The word "cunty" is also known, although used rarely: a line from Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi CBE is an English playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. The themes of his work have touched on topics of race, nationalism, immigration, and sexuality...
's My Beautiful Laundrette
My Beautiful Laundrette
My Beautiful Laundrette is a 1985 British comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. The story is set in London during the period when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, as shown through the complex—and often comical—relationships...
is the definition of England by a Pakistani immigrant
British Asian
British Asian is a term used to describe British citizens who descended from mainly South Asia, also known as South Asians in the United Kingdom...
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
Henry Green
Henry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke , an English author best remembered for the novel Loving, which was featured by Time in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.- Biography :Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family...
.
"Cunted" can mean to be extremely under the influence of drink and/or drugs.
In this sense the word is used to describe crude excess. An example of 'cunt' used as a simile to express an intense condition of bawdy, belligerent, antagonistic, or drunken behaviour, would be to describe another (or oneself) as behaving 'like a cunt'. This characterisation can be further qualified; 'like a total cunt', implying that the state of being like a cunt can have greater extremes: 'like a total shit fuck bastard cunt', for example. Such syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
though is rare.
An example in modern film script evoking 'cunt' as a simile of crude excess, and used with frank effect, is the 2000 British Film, Sexy Beast
Sexy Beast
Sexy Beast is a 2000 British-Spanish crime drama film directed by Jonathan Glazer and starring Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, and Ian McShane. Produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was Glazer's debut feature film, who had previously been a music video director for videos such as Rabbit in Your Headlights for...
, Directed by Jonathan Glazer
Jonathan Glazer
Jonathan Glazer is an English director of films, commercials and music videos.-Biography:After studying theatre design at Nottingham Trent University, Glazer started out directing theatre and making film and television trailers, including award-winning work for the BBC...
. In the film Don Logan, played by Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE is a British actor. He has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
, arrives at the home of ex-con Garry 'Gal' Dove (Ray Winstone
Ray Winstone
Raymond Andrew "Ray" Winstone is an English film and television actor. He is mostly known for his "tough guy" roles, beginning with that of Carlin in the 1979 film Scum and as Will Scarlet in the cult television adventure series Robin of Sherwood. He has also become well known as a voice over...
) by taxi, and as he steps from the car delivers his opening line; "Gotta change my shirt, it's sticking to me. I'm sweatin' like a cunt".
In gay slang
Gay slang
LGBT slang, LGBT speak or gay slang is a set of slang used predominantly among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. It has been used in various languages, including English and Japanese since the early 1900s as a means by members of the LGBT community as a group to self-advertise as a...
the term is used to describe something or someone being extremely original, impressive, or fantastic in regard to style (fashion or music) or demeanor. Both "cunt" and "cunty" are used interchangeably, often in adjective form. Originating in Ball culture
Ball culture
Ball culture, the house system, the ballroom community and similar terms describe the underground LGBT subculture in the United States in which people "walk" for trophies and prizes at events known as balls. Those who walk often also dance and vogue while others compete in various genres of drag...
, the term was popularized by the song "Cunty (The Feeling)" by drag performer Kevin Aviance
Kevin Aviance
Kevin Aviance is an American female impressionist, Club/Dance musician, and fashion designer and nightclub personality. He is a very popular personality in New York City's gay scene and has performed throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He is a member of the House of Aviance, a local gay...
. 1
Theatre
Theatre censorship was effectively abolishedTheatres Act 1968
The Theatres Act 1968 abolished censorship of the stage in the United Kingdom.Since 1737, scripts had been licensed for performance by the Lord Chamberlain's Office a measure initially introduced to protect Walpole's administration from political satire...
in the UK in 1968; prior to that all theatrical productions had to be vetted by the Lord Chamberlain's Office
Lord Chamberlain's Office
The Lord Chamberlain's Office is a department within the British Royal Household. It is presently concerned with matters such as protocol, state visits, investitures, garden parties, the State Opening of Parliament, royal weddings and funerals. For example, in April 2005 it organised the wedding of...
. This relaxation made possible UK productions such as the musical Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
and Oh! Calcutta!
Oh! Calcutta!
Oh! Calcutta! is an avant-garde theatrical revue, created by British drama critic Kenneth Tynan. The show, consisting of sketches on sex-related topics, debuted Off-Broadway in 1969 and then in London in 1970. It ran in London for over 3,900 performances, and in New York initially for 1,314...
. But "cunt" was not uttered on a British stage for some years.
Television
Broadcast media, by definition, reach wide audiences and thus are regulated externally for content. To minimise not only public criticism but also regulatory sanctions, policies have been developed by media providers as to how "cunt" and similar words should be treated. In a survey of 2000 commissioned by the British Broadcasting Standards CommissionOfcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...
, Independent Television Commission
Independent Television Commission
The Independent Television Commission licensed and regulated commercial television services in the United Kingdom between 1 January 1991 and 28 December 2003....
, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority
Advertising Standards Authority (United Kingdom)
The Advertising Standards Authority is the self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry in the United Kingdom. The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so cannot interpret or enforce legislation. However, its code of advertising practice broadly reflects legislation in many instances...
, "cunt" was regarded as the most offensive word which could be heard, above "motherfucker
Motherfucker
Motherfucker is a vulgarism which, in its most literal sense, refers to one who participates in sexual intercourse with a mother, either someone else's mother, or his own.- Variants :...
" and "fuck
Fuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...
". Nevertheless, there have been occasions when, particularly in a live broadcast, the word has been aired outside editorial control:
- The Frost ProgrammeDavid FrostSir David Frost is a British broadcaster.David Frost may also refer to:*David Frost , South African golfer*David Frost , classical record producer*David Frost *Dave Frost, baseball pitcher...
, broadcast live on 7 November 1970, was the first time the word was known to have been used on British television, by Felix DennisFelix DennisFelix Dennis is a British magazine publisher, poet, and philanthropist. His privately owned company, Dennis Publishing, pioneered computer and hobbyist magazine publishing in the United Kingdom...
, in an affectionate reference rather than offensively. This incident has since been reshown many times. - Bernard ManningBernard ManningBernard John Manning was an English comedian and nightclub owner. He was born and raised in Manchester in northwest England....
first said on television the line "They say you are what you eat. I'm a cunt." - This MorningThis Morning (TV series)This Morning is a British daytime television programme broadcast on ITV. As of September 2011, its main presenters are Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, and Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes, with various other presenters standing in for illness or contributing to sections of the programme.The...
broadcast the word in 2000, used by the modelModel (person)A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
Caprice BourretCaprice BourretCaprice Bourret is an American supermodel, actress, television personality and businesswoman. She currently resides in the United Kingdom where she runs her company By Caprice Lingerie Ltd.- Early life :...
while being interviewed live about her role in The Vagina MonologuesThe Vagina MonologuesThe Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the Off Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at AFRICA in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production which was produced by David Stone, Nina Essman, Dan Markley, The Araca Group, Willa Shalit, Mike Skipper...
However "cunt" has crossed over from accidental to purposeful use:
- The first scripted use of the word in the United Kingdom was in the ITVITVITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
drama No Mama No, broadcast in 1979. - In the final episode of the BBC series CouplingCoupling (UK TV series)Coupling is a British television sitcom written by Steven Moffat that aired on BBC2 from May 2000 to June 2004. Produced by Hartswood Films for the BBC, the show centres on the dating and sexual adventures and mishaps of six friends in their thirties, often depicting the three women and the three...
, aired in 2004, an allusion is made when Steve is expelled from the delivery ward: "Nurse: She said you can't. Steve: Yeah, trust me, the word wasn't can't!" - Jerry Springer – The Opera was shown by the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in January 2005. The performance included the phrase "cunting, cunting, cunting, cunting cunt" (a description of the Devil). However, more controversy was generated by the ChristChristChrist is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
saying that he "Might be 'a bit gay'" than by the use of "cunt". - In July 2007 BBC ThreeBBC ThreeBBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...
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 SmithWill Smith (comedian)Will Smith is a British comedian, actor and writer. He was born and grew up in Jersey and is known for his love and encyclopaedic knowledge of Bergerac, as well as his posh boy persona. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey and Charterhouse School. He now lives in London...
, viewers were taken to a street in OxfordOxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
once called 'Gropecunt Lane' and presented with examples of the acceptability of "cunt" as a word.
In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
the broadcast use of "cunt" is still rare; nevertheless, the word has slowly infiltrated into broadcasting:
- The HBO TV shows OzOz (TV series)Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes . It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz premiered on July 12, 1997 and ran for six seasons...
, Sex and the CitySex and the CitySex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...
, The SopranosThe SopranosThe Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...
, DeadwoodDeadwood (TV series)Deadwood is an American Western drama television series created, produced and largely written by David Milch. The series aired on the premium cable network HBO from March 21, 2004, to August 27, 2006, spanning three 12-episode seasons. The show is set in the 1870s in Deadwood, South Dakota, before...
, The WireThe Wire (TV series)The Wire is an American television drama series set and produced in and around Baltimore, Maryland. Created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon, the series was broadcast by the premium cable network HBO in the United States...
and True BloodTrue BloodTrue Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...
, as well as the Showtime series WeedsWeeds (TV series)Weeds is an American television comedy created by Jenji Kohan and produced by Tilted Productions in association with Lionsgate Television. The central character is Nancy Botwin , a widowed mother of two boys who begins selling marijuana to support her family after her husband dies suddenly of a...
, CalifornicationCalifornication (TV series)Californication is an American comedy-drama that premiered on Showtime on August 13, 2007. The show was created by Tom Kapinos. The protagonist, Hank Moody , is a troubled novelist whose move to California, coupled with his writer's block, complicates his relationships with his longtime girlfriend...
& Brotherhood also make frequent use of the word; and two episodes of the sitcom Curb Your EnthusiasmCurb Your EnthusiasmCurb Your Enthusiasm is an American comedy television series produced and broadcast by HBO, which premiered on October 15, 2000. As of 2011, it has completed 80 episodes over eight seasons. The series was created by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who stars as a fictionalized version of himself...
are devoted to the comical repercussions of its inadvertent use. - An episode of the NBCNBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
TV show 30 Rock30 Rock30 Rock is an American television comedy series created by Tina Fey that airs on NBC. The series is loosely based on Fey's experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live...
, titled The C WordThe C Word"The C Word" is the fourteenth episode of the first season of the American television comedy series 30 Rock. It was written by series creator Tina Fey and directed by Adam Bernstein. The episode originally aired on the National Broadcasting Company in the United States on February 15, 2007...
, centered around a subordinate calling protagonist Liz LemonLiz LemonElizabeth Miervaldis "Liz" Lemon is the main character of the American television series 30 Rock. She is portrayed by Tina Fey, who is also the creator of the series and its showrunner.-Personal history:...
(Tina FeyTina FeyElizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer, known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live , the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, and films such as Mean Girls and Baby Mama .Fey first broke into comedy as a featured player in the...
) a "cunt" and her subsequent efforts to regain her staff's favor. While the word was never uttered on camera, it is strongly implied that this is the offensive term used. - Jane FondaJane FondaJane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
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 MonologuesThe Vagina MonologuesThe Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the Off Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at AFRICA in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production which was produced by David Stone, Nina Essman, Dan Markley, The Araca Group, Willa Shalit, Mike Skipper...
.
Radio
On 6 December 2010 on the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
Today programme, James Naughtie
James Naughtie
James Naughtie is a British radio presenter and radio news presenter for the BBC. Since 1994 he has been one of the main presenters of Radio 4's Today programme.- Biography :...
referred to the British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt as Jeremy Cunt; 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
Andrew Marr
Andrew William Stevenson Marr is a Scottish journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years until May 1998, and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 until 2005....
referred to the incident during Start the Week
Start the Week
Start the Week is a discussion programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 which began in April 1970. The current presenter is the former BBC political editor Andrew Marr...
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 word has few, if any, recorded uses in mainstream cinema prior to the 1970s, the first possibly being in Carnal KnowledgeCarnal Knowledge (film)
Carnal Knowledge is a 1971 American drama film. The film was directed by Mike Nichols and written by Jules Feiffer.-Plot:Sandy and Jonathan are roommates at Amherst College whose lives are explored and seem to offer a contrast to one another...
(1971) in which Jonathan (Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
) asks, "Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?" Its subsequent use has been limited to films restricted to adult audiences, such as The Exorcist
The Exorcist (film)
The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...
(1973) in which Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran
Jack MacGowran
John Joseph "Jack" MacGowran was an Irish character actor, whose last film role was as the alcoholic director Burke Dennings in The Exorcist. He was probably best known for his work with Samuel Beckett.-Stage career:...
) addresses the butler, Karl (Rudolf Schündler): "Cunting Hun
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
! Bloody damn butchering Nazi pig!" and Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...
(1976) in which Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
) describes himself as "A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up."
Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 drama film directed by John Badham and starring: John Travolta as Tony Manero, an immature young man whose weekends are spent visiting a local Brooklyn discothèque; Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual friend; and Donna Pescow as Tony's former dance...
(1977) was released in two versions, "R" (Restricted) and "PG" (Parental Guidance), the latter omitting or replacing dialogue such as Tony Manero (John Travolta
John Travolta
John Joseph Travolta is an American actor, dancer and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease...
)'s comment to Annette (Donna Pescow
Donna Pescow
Donna Pescow is an American film and television actress and director.-Life and career:Pescow was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family. Her father owned and ran a news stand in downtown NYC at Battery Place. Pescow attended Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn and she took drama classes...
) "It's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt." This differential persists, and in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Agent Starling
Clarice Starling
Clarice M. Starling is a fictional character and the protagonist in the novels The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal by Thomas Harris....
(Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
) meets Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
) 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.
In Britain, the word "cunt" remains perhaps the only word that can alone result in an "18" rating from the British Board of Film Classification
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification , originally British Board of Film Censors, is a non-governmental organisation, funded by the film industry and responsible for the national classification of films within the United Kingdom...
. Ken Loach
Ken Loach
Kenneth "Ken" Loach is a Palme D'Or winning English film and television director.He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness , labour rights and child abuse at the...
's film Sweet Sixteen
Sweet Sixteen (2002 film)
Sweet Sixteen is a 2002 film by director Ken Loach. The film tells the story of a working class Scottish teenage boy, Liam , a typical 'ned', who dreams of starting afresh with his mother who is completing a prison term...
was given an "18" in 2002, ensuring that young people of the age depicted in the film were unable to view it legally, because of an estimated twenty uses of "cunt". 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." The 2010 Ian Dury
Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...
biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (film)
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is a 2010 biopic of Ian Dury, starring Andy Serkis as Dury. The film follows Dury's rise to fame and documents his personal battle with the disability caused by having contracted polio during childhood. The effect that his disability and his lifestyle have upon his...
was given a "15" rating despite containing seven uses of the word.
Comedy
In their Derek and CliveDerek and Clive
Derek and Clive is a double act of comedic characters created by Dudley Moore and Peter Cook in the 1970s. The performances were captured on the records Derek and Clive , Derek and Clive Come Again , and Derek and Clive Ad Nauseam , as well as in a film documentary, Derek and Clive Get the Horn...
dialogues, Peter Cook
Peter Cook
Peter Edward Cook was an English satirist, writer and comedian. An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. He has been described by Stephen Fry as "the funniest man who ever drew breath," although Cook's...
and Dudley Moore
Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television...
, particularly Cook, arguably made the word more accessible in the UK; in the 1976 sketch "This Bloke Came Up To Me", "cunt" is used over thirty times. The word is also used extensively by British comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown
Roy 'Chubby' Brown
Roy "Chubby" Brown is an English stand-up comedian, notorious for his decidedly blue humour. The controversial nature of his act means that he rarely appears on major television channels, and Brown has attracted accusations that his comedy style is outdated whilst also being described as "The most...
, which ensures that his stand-up
Stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...
act has never been fully shown on UK television.
Australian stand-up comedian, Rodney Rude
Rodney Rude
Rodney Rude is an Australian 'blue' stand-up comedian, poet and writer. He is infamous for his bawdy humour. He has released 12 albums and 5 videos throughout his long career, all of which are distributed by EMI Music Australia. To date, Rodney has sold well in excess of 3 million CDs videos and...
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-80's. Australian comedic singer Kevin Bloody Wilson
Kevin Bloody Wilson
Kevin Bloody Wilson is a comedy singer/songwriter who uses his heavy Australian accent/style with great success...
makes extensive use of the word, most notably in the songs Caring Understanding Nineties Type and You Can't Say "Cunt" in Canada.
The word appears in American comic George Carlin
George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, actor and author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums....
's 1972 standup routine on the list of the seven dirty words
Seven dirty words
The seven dirty words are seven English language words that American comedian George Carlin first listed in 1972 in his monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television". The words include: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits...
that could not, at that time, be said on American broadcast television, a routine that led to a U. S. Supreme Court decision. While some of the original seven are now heard on US broadcast television from time to time, "cunt" remains generally taboo except for on premium paid subscription cable channels like HBO or Showtime.
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", particularly notable as there is no musical lead-in to the lyrics.In 1979, during a concert at New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
's Bottom Line
Bottom Line
The Bottom Line was a music venue at 15 West Fourth Street between Mercer Street and Greene Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
, Carlene Carter
Carlene Carter
Carlene Carter is an American country singer and songwriter. She is the daughter of June Carter and her first husband, Carl Smith....
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." The comment was quoted widely in the press, and Carter spent much of the next decade trying to live the comment down. However use of the word in lyrics is not recorded before the Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious was an English musician best known as the bassist of the influential punk rock group Sex Pistols...
' 1978 version of My Way
My Way (song)
"My Way" is a song popularized by Frank Sinatra. Its lyrics were written by Paul Anka and set to music based on the French song "Comme d'habitude" composed in 1967 by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, with lyrics by Claude François and Gilles Thibault. Anka's English lyrics are unrelated to the...
, which marked the first known use of the word in a UK Top Ten hit, as a line was changed to "You cunt/I'm not a queer". The following year, "cunt" was used more explicitly in the song "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
's album Broken English:
The Happy Mondays
Happy Mondays
Happy Mondays are an English alternative rock band from Salford, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1980, the band's original line-up was Shaun Ryder on lead vocals, his brother Paul Ryder on bass, lead guitarist Mark Day, keyboardist Paul Davis, and drummer Gary Whelan...
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)
Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)
Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile was the first album by British band Happy Mondays. It was released in 1987 on Factory Records and was produced by John Cale....
, 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". A phrase from the same lyric, "Jesus is a cunt" was included on the notorious Cradle of Filth
Cradle of Filth
Cradle of Filth are an English extreme metal band, formed in Suffolk in 1991. The band's musical style evolved from black metal to a cleaner and more "produced" amalgam of gothic metal, symphonic black metal, and other extreme metal styles, while their lyrical themes and imagery are heavily...
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.
The word has been used by numerous non-mainstream bands, such as Australian band TISM
TISM
TISM was a seven piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group was formed in 1982 and enjoyed a large underground/independent following. Their third album Machiavelli and the Four Seasons reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995...
, who released an extended play
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
in 1993 "Australia the Lucky Cunt
Australia The Lucky Cunt
Australia The Lucky Cunt is the name of a 1993 EP by anonymous Australian band TISM. The title is a play on the expression "The Lucky Country".-Track listing:# "Lose Your Delusion 1"# "Jesus Pots The White Ball"...
" (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
I Might Be A Cunt, But I'm Not A Fucking Cunt
"I Might Be A Cunt, But I'm Not A Fucking Cunt" is a song by TISM, released as the second single from their album www.tism.wanker.com in 1998....
", which was banned. The American grindcore
Grindcore
Grindcore is an extreme genre of music that started in the early- to mid-1980s. It draws inspiration from some of the most abrasive music genres – including death metal, industrial music, noise and the more extreme varieties of hardcore punk....
band Anal Cunt
Anal Cunt
Anal Cunt, also known as AxCx and A.C., was an American grindcore band that formed in Newton, Massachusetts in 1988. Since its inception, the band underwent a number of line-up changes. Known for its grindcore musical style and controversial lyrics, Anal Cunt released eight full-length studio...
, on being signed to a bigger label, shortened their name to AxCx.
Computer and video games
The 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San AndreasGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a 2004 open world action video game developed by British games developer Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, the fifth original console release and eighth game overall...
was the first video game to use the word, 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
Danny Dyer
Danny Dyer is an English actor, media personality, and chairman of Greenwich Borough, a non-League football team.-Biography:Daniel John Dyer was born in Custom House, an area of East London, to Antony and Christine Dyer...
), who refers to Maccer as a "soppy cunt" in the mission "Don Peyote".
In the 2004 title The Getaway: Black Monday
The Getaway: Black Monday
The Getaway: Black Monday is an open world action video game, developed by SCE London Studio and distributed by Team Soho, it was released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2. It is set in London and take its cues from British gangster movies such as Get Carter, The Long Good Friday and Lock, Stock and...
by SCEE
SCEE
SCEE can refer to:*Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, a subsidiary of Sony*School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a constituent college of the National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan...
was a videogame to use the word. It is used several times during the game.
In the 2008 title Grand Theft Auto IV
Grand Theft Auto IV
Grand Theft Auto IV is a 2008 open world action video game published by Rockstar Games, and developed by British games developer Rockstar North. It has been released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles, and for the Windows operating system...
by Rockstar North
Rockstar North
Rockstar North is a British video game developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, best known for creating the Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings franchises in its earlier guise as DMA....
and distributed by Take Two Interactive, available on the PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
and Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
consoles, the word, amongst many other expletives, was used by James Pegorino after finding out that his personal bodyguard, who had turned states
Turn state's evidence
To turn state's evidence is when an accused or convicted criminal testifies as a witness for the state against his associates or accomplices. Turning state's evidence is occasionally a result of a change of heart or feelings of guilt, but more often is done in response to a generous offer from the...
, who exclaimed "The world is a cunt!" while aiming a shotgun at the player.
Linguistic variants and derivatives
Various euphemismEuphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
s, minced
Minced oath
A minced oath is an expression based on a profanity or a taboo term that has been altered to reduce the objectionable characteristics.Many languages have such expressions...
forms and in-joke
In-joke
An in-joke, also known as an inside joke or in joke, is a joke whose humour is clear only to people who are in a particular social group, occupation, or other community of common understanding...
s 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...", the phrase cunning stunt has been used in popular music. Its first documented appearance was by the English band CaravanCaravan (band)
Caravan are an English band from the Canterbury area, founded by former Wilde Flowers members David Sinclair, Richard Sinclair, Pye Hastings and Richard Coughlan. Caravan rose to success over a period of several years from 1968 onwards into the 1970s as part of the Canterbury scene, blending...
who released the album Cunning Stunts
Cunning Stunts (Caravan album)
Cunning Stunts is the sixth studio album by progressive rock band Caravan, released in 1975. The title of the album is a spoonerism for 'Stunning Cunts', which is typical of their cheeky use of language...
in July 1975; the title was later used by Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
for a CD/Video compilation
Cunning Stunts (Metallica)
Cunning Stunts is a concert video by heavy metal band Metallica released in 1998. It was released in DVD and VHS formats. The title is also a spoonerism of the term Stunning Cunts....
, and in 1992 the Cows
The Cows
Cows are a post-hardcore/punk blues band from Minneapolis, Minnesota. The band formed in 1987 and disbanded in 1998. They were known for a unique mixture of punk rock and blues played with large amounts of noise and surreal humour; their music is often considered noise rock...
released an album with the same title. In his 1980s BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television programme, Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett was an English comedian, radio DJ and television entertainer. Born Maurice James Christopher Cole, Everett is best known for his career as a radio DJ and for the Kenny Everett television shows.-Early life:...
played a vapid starlet, Cupid Stunt, and in 2005 comedian Al Murray
Al Murray
Alastair James Hay "Al" Murray , is a British comedian best known for his stand-up persona, The Pub Landlord, a stereotypical xenophobic public house licensee. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy...
has hosted a British television comedy game show
Game show
A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...
, Fact Hunt
Fact Hunt
Fact Hunt is a comedic TV quiz show aired late at night on various ITV regions. It was hosted by Al Murray in character as the Pub Landlord, the character he has long played in stand-up routines and in the sitcom Time Gentlemen Please....
.
There are numerous informal acronyms, including various apocryphal stories concerning academic establishments, such as the Cambridge University National Trust Society.
There are many variants of the covering phrase "See you next Tuesday", including a play of that title by Ronald Harwood
Ronald Harwood
Sir Ronald Harwood CBE is an author, playwright and screenwriter. He is most noted for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay...
.
Puns
The name "Mike Hunt" is a frequent substitute; it has been used in a scene from the movie Porky'sPorky's
Porky's is a 1982 comedy film about the escapades of teenagers at the fictional Angel Beach High School in Florida in 1954. It was released in the United States in 1982, and spawned two sequels: Porky's II: The Next Day and Porky's Revenge! and influenced many writers in the teen film genre...
, and for a character in the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio comedy Radio Active in the 1980s. "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
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
in collaboration with the International Society of Typographic Designers
International Society of Typographic Designers
The International Society of Typographic Designers is a professional body run by and for typographers, graphic designers, and educators. The society has an international membership and its aims are to establish and maintain standards of typography and to provide a forum for debate.- History :The...
.
Apart from more directly obvious references, there have been allusions. Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
once famously defined countryside on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, sometimes abbreviated to ISIHAC or Clue, is a BBC radio comedy panel game broadcast since 11 April 1972 at the rate of one or two series each year , transmitted on BBC Radio 4, with occasional repeats on BBC Radio 4 Extra and the BBC's World Service...
as the act of "murdering Piers Morgan
Piers Morgan
Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan , known professionally as Piers Morgan, is a British journalist and television presenter. He is editorial director of First News, a national newspaper for children....
". In Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps was a BBC sitcom created and written by Susan Nickson. It is set in the town of Runcorn in Cheshire, England, and initially revolves around the lives of five twenty-somethings, played by Ralf Little , Sheridan Smith , Will Mellor , Natalie Casey and...
, Donna and Gaz are perusing erotic novels when they come across The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas's most popular work. He completed the work in 1844...
; Gaz helpfully informs Donna that 'it doesn't say Count'. Similarly, in an episode of Spaced
Spaced
Spaced is a British television sitcom written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright. It is noted for its rapid-fire editing, frequent pop culture references and jokes, eclectic music, and occasional displays of surrealism and non-sequitur humour...
, 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. 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
Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
:
and Mark Lamarr
Mark Lamarr
Mark Lamarr is an English comedian, radio DJ and television presenter.-Early life:Lamarr was born in the Park South area of Swindon and has three elder sisters. His father is Irish...
used a variation of this same gag on BBC TV's Never Mind the Buzzcocks
Never Mind the Buzzcocks
Never Mind the Buzzcocks is a comedy panel game television show with a pop music theme, currently without a permanent presenter. It stars Phill Jupitus and Noel Fielding as team captains. The show is produced by Talkback Thames for the BBC, and is usually aired on BBC Two...
. "Stuart Adamson
Stuart Adamson
Stuart Adamson , born William Stuart Adamson, was an English-born Scottish guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, described by legendary music journalist John Peel as “Britain’s answer to Jimi Hendrix”...
was a Big Country
Big Country
Big Country are a Scottish rock band formed in Dunfermline, Fife in 1981. They were most popular in the early to mid-1980s, but they still release material for a cult following...
member... and we do remember".
Rhyming slang
Several celebrities have had their names used as euphemisms, including footballer Roger HuntRoger Hunt
Roger Hunt, MBE is an English former footballer. He was a member of the England team which won the 1966 World Cup.-Club career:...
, actor Gareth Hunt
Gareth Hunt
Alan Leonard Hunt was an English actor, known as Gareth Hunt, best remembered for playing the footman Frederick Norton in Upstairs, Downstairs and Mike Gambit in The New Avengers.-Early life:...
, singer James Blunt
James Blunt
James Hillier Blount , better known by his stage name James Blunt, is an English singer-songwriter and musician, and former army officer, whose debut album, Back to Bedlam and single releases, including "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover", brought him to fame in 2005...
, and 1970s motor-racing driver James Hunt
James Hunt
James Simon Wallis Hunt was a British racing driver from England who won the Formula One World Championship in . Hunt's often action packed exploits on track earned him the nickname "Hunt the Shunt." After retiring from driving, Hunt became a media commentator and businessman...
, whose name was once used to introduce the British radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, sometimes abbreviated to ISIHAC or Clue, is a BBC radio comedy panel game broadcast since 11 April 1972 at the rate of one or two series each year , transmitted on BBC Radio 4, with occasional repeats on BBC Radio 4 Extra and the BBC's World Service...
as "the show that is to panel games what James Hunt is to rhyming slang".
A canting
Cant (language)
A Cant is the jargon or argot of a group, often implying its use to exclude or mislead people outside the group.-Derivation in Celtic linguistics:...
form of some antiquity is berk, short for "Berkeley Hunt
Berkeley Hunt
The Berkeley Hunt is a fox hunt in the west of England. Its country lies in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire, between Gloucester and Bristol.-History:...
" or "Berkshire Hunt", and in a Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
sketch, an idioglossia
Idioglossia
An idioglossia is an idiosyncratic language invented and spoken by only one person or very few people. Most often, idioglossia refers to the "private languages" of young children, especially twins, the latter being more specifically known as cryptophasia, and commonly referred to as twin talk or...
c 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".
Derived meanings
The word "cunt" forms part of some technical terms used in seafaring and other industries.- In nautical usage, a cunt splice is a type of rope spliceRope splicingRope splicing in ropework is the forming of a semi-permanent joint between two ropes or two parts of the same rope by partly untwisting and then interweaving their strands. Splices can be used to form a stopper at the end of a line, to form a loop or an eye in a rope, or for joining two ropes...
used to join two lines in the riggingRiggingRigging is the apparatus through which the force of the wind is used to propel sailboats and sailing ships forward. This includes masts, yards, sails, and cordage.-Terms and classifications:...
of ships. Its name has been bowdlerisedThomas BowdlerThomas Bowdler was an English physician who published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work, edited by his sister Harriet, intended to be more appropriate for 19th century women and children than the original....
since at least 1861, and in more recent times it is commonly referred to as a "cut splice". - The Dictionary of Sea Terms, found within Dana'sRichard Henry Dana, Jr.Richard Henry Dana Jr. was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family who gained renown as the author of the American classic, the memoir Two Years Before the Mast...
1841 maritime compendiumCompendiumA compendium is a concise, yet comprehensive compilation of a body of knowledge. A compendium may summarize a larger work. In most cases the body of knowledge will concern some delimited field of human interest or endeavour , while a "universal" encyclopedia can be referred to as a compendium of...
The Seaman's Friend, defines the word cuntline 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 glossary of The Ashley Book of KnotsThe Ashley Book of KnotsThe Ashley Book of Knots is an encyclopedia of knots first published in 1944 by Clifford Warren Ashley. The culmination of over 11 years of work, it contains some 7000 illustrations and more than 3854 entries covering over 2000 different knots. The entries include instructions, uses, and for some...
by Clifford W. AshleyClifford AshleyClifford Warren Ashley was an American artist, author, sailor, and knot expert. He was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, son of Abiel Davis Ashley and Caroline Morse. Ashley married Sarah Scudder Clark in 1932 and had two daughters, also adopting his wife's oldest daughter from a previous...
, first published in 1944, defines cuntlines as "the surface seams between the strands of a rope." Though referring to a different object than Dana's definition, it similarly describes the crease formed by two abutting cylinders. - In US military usage personnel refer privately to a common uniform item, a flat, soft cover (hat) with a fold along the top resembling an invagination, as a cunt cap. The proper name for the item is garrison capGarrison capA Side cap is a foldable military cap with straight sides and a creased or hollow crown sloping to the back where it is parted. It is known as a garrison cap , a wedge cap , or officially field service cap, , but it is more generally known as the side cap.It follows the style which...
or overseas cap, depending on the organization in which it is worn.
- Cunt hair (sometimes as red cunt hair) has been used since the late 1950s to signify a very small distance.
- Cunt-eyed has been used to refer to a person suffering from a squintStrabismusStrabismus is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other. It typically involves a lack of coordination between the extraocular muscles, which prevents bringing the gaze of each eye to the same point in space and preventing proper binocular vision, which may adversely...
.
Further reading
- Cunt: A Declaration of IndependenceCunt: A Declaration of IndependenceCunt is a 1998 feminist book by Inga Muscio that called for a breakdown in the boundaries between women and in sexuality. In it, the writer hopes to reverse the negative connotations behind female genital euphemisms. The books traverses such subjects as menstruation, rape, and competition between...
, a 1998 book by Inga MuscioInga MuscioInga Muscio, , is a feminist, anti-racist writer and public speaker.She became famous after the publication of her 1998 Seal Press book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, which called for women to break down boundaries between themselves and their bodies, and each other.She is also the author of... - Lady Love Your Cunt, 1969 article by Germaine GreerGermaine GreerGermaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
(see References above) - Vaginal Aesthetics, re-creating the representation, the richness and sweetness, of "vagina/cunt", an article by Joanna Frueh Source: Hypatia, Vol. 18, No. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn–Winter 2003), pp. 137–158