Cunt

"Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." —GW Bush Sept. 6, 2004, in front of a photoshopped background.

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Cunt, referring to female genitalia, is one of the most taboo four-letter words in the English language. This is because it is considered offensive both by religious prudes and feminist prudes, which means very few people can safely say it without offending someone in their business or social circles. It also tends to offend girls from middle school to college age in the United States because they just know that assholes use it to be deliberately hurtful (much like the N-word). Calling a young lady this is an excellent way to get slapped or kicked in the balls.

As perhaps the most powerful force in the universe, it has many other names.

Etymologies

The word is seldom encountered in clinical settings, but there are apparently exceptions.

The vagina is a wonderful place from which most of us came, and where many of us try to return to as often as possible. The word vagina simply means "sheath" in Latin, and it has been in use in English for more than three centuries. "Cunt," by comparison, is a legitimate non-slang word with an extremely long history. The earliest known usages were as place names, e.g. Cuntelowe, Warwickshire in 1221 and Gropecuntelane, Oxford and London in 1230) Gropecuntelane was where the brothels were located. Nice! The Middle English word "quentye" had several homonymous meanings, including 'pleasing-thing' and 'clever'. From this root we also derive the word 'quaint'.

"Cunt" has several cognates in other languages:

• cunnus in Latin, from Proto-Indo-European *kut-nos
  • con in French
  • cona in Portuguese
  • coño in modern Spanish
• κύσθος (kysthos), in Greek
• kunta in old Norse, modern Norwegian, Swedish
• kunte in Danish, Middle Low German
• kut in Dutch
• quim in English
• queynte in Middle English

Ultimately, it derives from the Proto-Indo-European stem *gwen-, meaning "woman" (giving it the literal meaning of "womanly bits" and thus cognate with such words as "gynecologist" and "banshee"). The word also has resemblances to "cunabula," a cradle and "cunicle," an obsolete word for a passage. The Romans extended the use of cunnus to mean whore in much the same way that English speakers used "cunt" as a pejorative term for "woman", as well as for a woman's anatomical parts. This usage has now evolved into an abusive derogatory term which has given "cunt" an entirely new meaning, particularly when applied to men as well as women.

Usage

Cunt is used — particularly by non–American English speakers — in a wide variety of situations, as well as in the more traditional usage in reference to the pudenda. Beginning with the most traditional use, examples include:

• "She had a lovely cunt."
• "She's a complete cunt."
• "He's a fucking cunt."
• "What kind of a stupid cunt do you think I am?" (may be used by either gender)
• "This cunting spanner doesn't fit any of these fucking lug nuts."
• "Barcelona want Cesc for 30mil, the fucking cunts."
• "Cunt cunt cunt the cuntin' cunt" (Australian)
• "Oh the everyday life of glorious Chinese cunts." (天朝木耳的日常, Chinese Manosphere)

Shock value

A beauty cunt, eh?

Along with other words expressing bigotry, it is widely considered to be the most offensive word in English (at least in the US and UK), above the likes of "motherfucker" and "fuck," but its use and the public exposure to such language has degraded what such a prominent position means. One indication of the shock value of the word is the Scunthorpe problem, in which AOL blocked residents from Scunthorpe, England from creating accounts in 1996.

Mark Lawson, writing in The Guardian (February 5, 2004), contends that the word has now lost its power to shock, at least in England. This was following an outburst from punk icon John Lydon (one time member of the Sex Pistols), who, at 10:30 PM on February 4, 2004, during a mainstream live British television transmission of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! (a reality show in which failing celebrities degrade themselves for tabloid attention) accused the voting audience at home of being "fucking cunts" for failing to choose him as that night's loser. Fewer than 100 complaints were received by ITV1 (the broadcaster) and Ofcom (the regulatory authority) combined — contrasted with the many thousands that complained about the blasphemy contained in Jerry Springer: The Opera at around the same time. However, swearing of any kind still generates steady complaints before the "watershed" time of 9:00 PM. Australians continue to use the word as a sort of hyphen.

Cunt in popular culture

• In 1975, lesbian and artist Tee Corinne published the Cunt Coloring Book, as an attempt to reclaim the word as something positive and to show the beauty and diversity of cunts. Some later editions of the book were published as Labiaflowers.
• One of the many segments of The Vagina Monologues is called "I Call it Cunt".
• "See You Next Tuesday" (C U Next Tuesday) is a catty backronym (acronym back-formation), sometimes used intentionally.
• The Clash, in keeping with their observed policy of using one swear word per album, use the line "all the young cunts" several times in their song "All the Young Punks" on Give 'Em Enough Rope.
• Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, regularly uses the term "cunt" in place of other male pronouns in his novels.
• In The Thick of It, Malcolm Tucker uses the word cunt — a lot.
• Not forgetting, of course, that book with the daisy.
• In 2016, Samantha Bee gave her "Thunder Cunt" award T-Shirt to CNN host Jake Tapper "for making cable news bearable". In 2018, she called Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt".

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  Use your imagination!

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  Please do eat the daisies

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  Grabbing the word back for feminism

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  Country matters… Santa Cruz Women's March, 2017

Trivia

This list of miscellaneous information is endorsed by the RationalWiki Pub Quiz Team!

The former Gropecunt Lane in Oxford, now Magpie Lane

• In the first century BCE, Cicero held that cunnus should be avoided as being obscene.
• The City of London (ca. 1230 CE), and other English towns and cities, once boasted a Gropecuntelane. It has since been renamed Threadneedle Street, a Victorian euphemism for sexual intercourse. It is the current location of the Bank of England. Many consider this oddly appropriate.
• Chaucer used the word unblushingly in his Canterbury Tales (1387-1400). The Wife of Bath in her tale, says:
  • What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone?
  • Os it for ye wolde have my queynte allone?
• In Twelfth Night (1600-1601) by William Shakespeare, the steward Malvolio, upon picking up a letter, attempts to decipher it:
  • By my life, this is my lady's hand.
  • These be her very C's her U's and [here "and" could substitute for "N"]
  • Her Ts, and thus she makes her great P's.
• In Hamlet (1603) by William Shakespeare, the title character uses "country matters" as a thinly-veiled euphemism.
  • HAMLET: (lying down at OPHELIA's feet) Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
  • OPHELIA: No, my lord.
  • HAMLET: I mean, my head upon your lap?
  • OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.
  • HAMLET: Do you think I meant country matters?
  • OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.
  • HAMLET: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
  • OPHELIA: What is, my lord?
  • HAMLET: Nothing.
• In The Royal Angler of Windsor, a ditty on the Subject of Nell Gwyn, Charles II's mistress, John, Wilmott, 2^nd Earl of Rochester writes:
  • However weak and slender be the string,
  • Bait it with Cunt, and it will hold a king.
• By the time that Robert Burns came to write his Merrie Muses of Caledonia (ca. 1800), the use of the word was expurgated from the text:
  • For ilka hair upon her c___t
  • Was worth a royal ransom.
• The word was used several times in the first part of the 20^th century by authors such as D. H. Lawrence in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), and James Joyce, in Ulysses (1922), in which he describes the Dead Sea as "… the grey silken cunt of the Holy Land". However, it was not until Lady Chatterley's Lover was finally cleared for full publication in 1959 (US) and 1960 (UK) that the word "cunt" could once again be used in mainstream literature.
• The word is still taboo on mainstream British television, but Kenny Everett, had a character called "Cupid Stunt" while Rik Mayall played a character called A. Cnut. There was also a Monty Python sketch in which a character who was able to pronounce the letter k but not the letter c (which he mispronounced as b) was advised to use ks in place of hard cs. For his own failure to think of this, the character then self-deprecatingly referred to himself as a "silly bunt". This line only appeared in live performances of the sketch and recordings thereof; presumably it was too salacious for television.
• To call someone a "burk" or "berk" is a closeted way of calling them a cunt, using the rhyming slang of "Berkshire hunt". It is worth noting that, despite its etymology, this term is not regarded as being anywhere near as offensive as the word cunt.
• The London Times bans this word in its personal ads. Back in the 1960s, some ingenious woman evaded the ban by posting "See you when tea is ready, my darling."
• Similarly, "dropkick" is rhyming slang, short for "dropkick punt". (Australia)

Come love, and dwell with me

Under the greenwood tree,

None can more happy be,

Than I shall be if blessed with thee!

(Quoted in Pearsall 1969, 495)

See also

• Sexual intercourse
• Yoni
• Dick
• See the Wikipedia article on Profanity.