Ask any linguist for the most versatile word in the English language, and chances are the F-bomb will be near the top of their list. How many other words can function as a verb, noun, adjective, filler, intensifier, and exclamation? Until this week, however, it seemed we were destined to forever duck up, not have a ducking clue, not give a duck, find everything ducking annoying, wear a duck-off hat, and cry “Duck!” when stubbing our toe. Such has been Apple’s curious autocorrection on our phone screens while other full-frontal words have flown beneath the radar. That is now set to change, and Apple’s imminent update means we will no longer get our ducks in a row while messaging when we were hoping for something stronger. “In those moments when you just want to type a ducking word,” Apple’s software chief has said, “the keyboard will learn it.” Is it about time? Abso-ducking-lutely.
The tech giant’s choice to censor “fuck” has been a curious one, inviting both mirth and irritation on the part of its customers. Of course, there has always been a hack available to get around it, but most of us have been too lazy to explore it and have resorted instead to shouting “Fuck a duck!” at our devices. But the addition of a figleaf to the most popular word in our swearing arsenal is part of a long tradition of typographical bleeping.
One of the earliest forms of euphemism was the replacement of certain letters with a dash. And it wasn’t today’s top-shelf candidates that were chosen. In the Middle Ages and far beyond, the true taboos involved religious profanity (the very word “profane” is from the Latin pro fanum, “outside the temple”, hence not sacred). Blasphemy involving the sacrilegious use of the Lord’s name inspired a whole lexicon of sidesteps, including “Gadsbudlikins!” (for “God’s body”), “zounds!” (“God’s wounds”), and “Gadzooks!” (“God’s hooks”). Alternatively, a dash would be used in an offensive word, such as for the “o” in “G-d” and as a way of sanitizing “damn” with “d—n”.
This game of blankety blank (itself a euphemism) continued for some time. A cult novel from 1893, The Further Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, mischievously delivered the line “I wouldn’t give a blank for such a blank blank. I’m blank, if he don’t look as though he’d swaller’d a blank codfish”.
By contrast, the words considered most offensive today were once, if a little impolite, certainly not taboo. One of the earliest examples we have of “fuck”, from 1528, is the line “O d fucking abbot”, written by an anonymous monk in the margins of a manuscript. It’s unclear whether he was expressing extreme irritation at his boss, or implying that said abbot was inappropriately lusty, but the most striking thing about the monk’s brief remark is that he couldn’t bring himself to write “damned”, yet considered “fucking” fair game.
Things began to change during the Renaissance, when, as the writer Melissa Mohr puts it her history of swearing, Holy Sh*t, swearing turned away from the Holy and back to the bodily functions that had once inspired ancient graffiti (some discovered in Pompeii would shock even modern ears). Using symbols for these new profanities became more popular. In her Preface to her late sister’s novel Wuthering Heights, which features such words as “damn” and “slut”, Charlotte Brontë writes: “The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does – what feeling it spares – what horror it conceals.”
In the early 1900s, Rudolph Dirks’ comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids gave us both the first speech bubbles and a new iconography of swearing, involving various symbols such as asterisks, @s, anchors – sailors notoriously like to turn the air blue – and a whole host of “bangs”, “shrieks”, “plings”, and “screamers” (slang through the ages for the exclamation mark). Such symbols became known as “obscenicons” and, more recently, as “grawlix”, a term coined by the cartoonist Mort Walker.
Today, while British newspapers adopt different stances to profanity, ranging from full frontal to amply covered-up, it clearly pays to tread carefully. The F-bomb still has explosive power, even as it has survived centuries worth of attempts to censor it. We haven’t quite become the nation of potty mouths some would have us believe.
Still, thanks to Apple’s long-overdue decision, many of us will be glad that our fingers will no longer have to speak bashfully, and that “lalochezia” – the relief from pain or stress that can accompany a good swear – is now firmly on the table. Then again, sometimes autocorrect likes to have the last laugh. I have sent many an email that I intended to conclude with “Hope that suits”, with “Hope that shits”. I’m sure the recipients find it ducking hilarious.
Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. She has appeared in Dictionary Corner on Countdown since 1992, and co-hosts with Gyles Brandreth the podcast Something Rhymes with Purple.