Some finer points of grammar

[Ralph Howard]

> 
> Alan wrote:  "This reminds me:  I've wondered about Pynchon's use of the 
> word 'fuck'
> in M&D.  Was the word in pretty common use in those days?  Obviously,
> foax like Fielding and Sterne didn't use it in print, and Barth used
> 'swive' in _The Sot-Weed Factor_[1960].  What say ye, Academicks?"
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> A few years back I volunteered at the Brooklyn Historical Society's 
> library.  They had some old dictionaries, earliest I beleive was early 
> 19th C Dutch-English, and the f-word was included.
> 
> Richard Romeo
> Coordinator of Cooperating Collections
> The Foundation Center-NYC
> 212-807-2417
> rromeo at fdncenter.org

>From the American Heritage dictionary third edition:

Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word, first record in
English in the 15th century. Age has not dimmed its shock value, even
though it is seen much more often now than in the past.  Its first
known occurrence, in a poem entitled "Flen flyys" written sometime
before 1500, is in code illustrating the unacceptability of the word
even then.  The poem, composed in a mixture of Latin and English,
satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, with the title
taken from the first words of the poem "Feln, flyys, and freris," that
is "fleas, flies and friars."  The line that contains fuck reads: "Non
sunt in coeli, gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk." The Latin words "Non sunt in
coeli" mean "they [the friars] are not in heaven, since."  The code
"gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" is easily broken by simply writing the
proceeding letter in the alphabet.  As we decode, we must watch for
differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now.  For
g write f; for x, v (used for u and v); d, c; b, a; o, n; v, t; xx,
vv(which equals w); k, i; x, v; z, y; t, s; p, o; g, f; i, h; f, e; m,
l; and for k, i.  The yields "fvccant [a fake Latin from] vvivys of
heli."  The whole thus reads in translation" "They are not in heaven
because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge]"


Ralph






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Ralph Howard                    Phone:  (803) 777-2913 
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