Behold: The First Recorded Instance Of The F-Word, 1528, In The Prescient Phrase ‘Fuckin Abbot’
IT IS JUST TOO PERFECT.
The first English usage of the word ‘fuck’ has been found, written in fancy calligraphy in the margins of a manuscript, dating back to 1528.
The word was scribed by an anonymous monk who, leafing through a copy of Cicero’s guide to moral conduct, De Officiis, was compelled to express his apparent crankiness at the misconduct of the head of his monastery.
The result? The first official utterance of a now ubiquitous phrase: “Fuckin’ Abbot(t)”.
“It is difficult to know whether the annotator intended “fucking” to mean “having sex,” as in “that guy is doing too much fucking for someone who is supposed to be celibate,” or whether he used it as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay; if the latter, it anticipates the first recorded use by more than three hundred years,” writes etymologist Melissa Mohr. “Either is possible, really — John Burton, the abbot in question, was a man of questionable monastic morals.”
Sometimes the world is too perfect.