"Fuck’s continued vitality is even more amazing when compared to the fate of its sixteenth century synonyms: jape and sarde are virtually unknown; Chaucer’s swive is archaic; and occupy returns to English with a nonsexual meaning."<p>Apparently "occupy" was during 16c.-17c. a euphemism for "have sexual intercourse with," which caused it to fall from polite usage. This gives new meaning to the contemporary Occupy Wall Street movement.
My, what an enormous quantity of footnotes. There is more footnote than paper. It seems to be largely an excuse to not bother planning and structuring your essay properly.<p>Very interesting though.<p>My fuck related question: why do some people on the internet self censor with asterisks in their postings? F*ck and so on. I have tried many times to imagine a logical thought process that could lead to this behaviour, but I cannot. Perhaps someone here who does this can enlighten me?
When I took linguistics, we studied "expletive infixation" in two of our courses -- and in American English, the main example of that is the word "fuck", as in "abso-fucking-lutely".<p>My first professor had no problems leading the class with that example, whilst my second professor became very timid during that lesson and had us use "bloody" from British English instead. It's amusing to me that even linguistic professors can become shy at the sound of an obscene word -- the taboo-ness is that ingrained into us.<p>More on expletive infixation:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_infixation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_infixation</a>
Disappointed that the author missed out the notable case of Arkell v. Pressdram (1971), frequently referenced in England's Private Eye magazine. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation</a>)