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Cunt is a vulgar term that refers to the human female genitals. It is an old and native English word, replaced after the Norman Conquest by the Latin vagina, originally a Roman term meaning 'scabbard.' 'Cunt' is now used only as a coarse colloquialism. It is also used as a term of abuse: in North American usage, it is mainly directed at women, and in British usage mainly directed at men. It can also be used more abstractly, as in "I've had a cunt of a day" or even as a word-stem: "I've had a cuntish day," "Bob was in a really cunty mood," and also as a colloquialism for getting drunk or intoxicated on drugs - "Let's get cunted!" The word is generally considered to be more offensive than equivalent words referring to the penis. North Americans generally find the word more offensive than the British and Australians; in Britain, unlike in America, "cunt" can be used as a jovial term of endearment in specific contexts.
With the growing acceptance of the word fuck in print and broadcast media, cunt is the last genuinely unprintable and unsayable sexual word in mainstream American media (the most notable non-sexual word being nigger); this is not the case in the UK. Some feminists seek to claim cunt as an acceptable word, in much the same way that queer has been "reclaimed" by homosexuals.
In January 2005, the BBC faced controversy after it broadcast Jerry Springer - The Opera on British television. The performance included the phrase "cunting, cunting, cunting, cunting cunt" (a description of the Devil).
History
Cunt is an old Germanic word, and appeared as cunte in Middle English and kunta in Old Norse. It has cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish and Norwegian kunta, Frisian kunte, and Dutch kut. Its original derivation is an Old Germanic stem kunton. See gonads, genital, gamete, genetics and gene. Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus (vulva), French con, and Spanish coño have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus: cuneatus, wedge-shaped; cuneo v. fasten with a wedge; (figurative) to wedge in, squeeze in, leading to English words like cuneiform and cunnilingus.
It is worth quoting a scholarly reference: Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, New York: Greenwich House, Distributed by Crown Publishers, Inc. MCMLVIII, MCMLIX, MCMLXI, MCMLXVI, ISBN 0517414252, page 135.
- cunt: ME cunte (occ counte), recorded once in OE: OFris kunte, akin to ON kunta, MLG-LG kunte, D kunte, MD conte; also to MF (and F) con, OF varr cun, cunne; like It conno, from L cunnus, s cun-. The presence of t in the Gmc has long puzzled the etymologists: even Walther von Wartburg aligns the Gmc kunta, kunte, with the L cunnus only under the aegis of a question-mark; for cunnus, E & M adduce the syn Gr kusthos and the Per kun, the posterior, but they omit to cite the Hit kun, tail; for kusthos, Hofmann proposes an orig *kuzdhos, with extended r *kus- or *keus- and with true IE r *ku- or *keu-, to hide or conceal, and he adduces L cutis, skin which has s cut-, extension of r *cu-, *ku-, the skin being a coverer.
- But is it not probable that the word is of common Medit stock: Eg offers qefen-t, vagina, vulva, akin to the n-lacking Eg ka-t, vagina, vulva, mother, women collectively. There are also several Sem congnates. The basic idea is prob 'essential femineity'.
Cunt has been in common use in English since at least the 13th century. 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 current London street name of "Gropecuntelane".
Although Shakespeare doesn't use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still has fun with it, using wordplay to sneak it in. 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 C's, her U's, and her T's: and thus makes she her great P's."
In a similar fashion, the British band The Sex Pistols recorded a song entitled '"Pretty Vacant", pronounced pretty vay-khunt.
The word quaint, possibly from the Latin for 'known', has also been used in historical times in much the same way as cunt and probably had a similar pronunciation. A notable early use of quaint was from Chaucer in his Miller's Tale "Pryvely he caught hir by the queynte".
The historical normality of Cunt can be shown by the existence of the River Kennet which derives its name from the same source. The Kennet flows forth from a cunt-shaped opening.
Testimonials
"I'm a really big fan of cunt over words like pussy, and especially, vagina. The word has this great guttural sound that lets you get right into it. Pussy and vagina are really dirty words - you only ever hear really greasy men saying things like that. Cunt lets women be vulgar without being derogatory."
Related Topics
fuck it
External links
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Further reading
- Inga Muscio, Cunt: A declaration of Independence [Seal Press]
- Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets [Harper & Row]
- Cunt, a 1999 novel by Stewart Home
- Lady Love Your Cunt, 1969 article by Germaine Greer and 1993 song by UK band SMASH
- Just Like A Cunt and A Cunt Like You, two songs by UK power electronics pioneers Whitehouse
- I Might Be A Cunt, But I'm Not A Fucking Cunt, a 1998 song by Australian band TISM
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