My parents didn’t swear at home. They certainly weren’t prudes, but swearing (in front of the children, anyway!) was not part of our daily lives. An early memory of mine is when I swore at my sister at the dinner table (with a new expressive word I’d learned at school), and didn’t see clip around my ears from my father coming. I didn’t do it again.

I swear. Most of us do. But for the most part, we’re reasonably careful when swearing around others, particularly family and children, and especially grandchildren. For many it’s viewed as offensive (sometimes deeply!), for others it’s laziness, a poor excuse when we can’t find the right words.

But swearing, or profanity, has long been part of our language. Shakespeare wasn’t averse to it (damn, bastard, etc.), in some cases being quite brave in his use of ‘bad’ or provocative words (‘Villain, I have done thy mother.’). In particular, it could be very dangerous to use words or phrases that could be interpreted as profanity, and the Bard didn’t hold back in taking the Lord’s name in vain (‘God’s bodykins’). So much so “that the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players was handed down in 1606 to limit that kind of cursing in plays.  Even with this Act and the eye of the Master of Revels on him, Shakespeare got away with quite a lot of impiety in his works.” (https://fandom-grammar.livejournal.com/92908.html?)

Confusingly, this meant that alternative (and seemingly equally offensive) words were substituted for God in Shakespeare’s prose. The word ‘cock’ has always had rude connotations, and we find the following in Hamlet (Hamlet, IV, v, lines 57-60), spoken by Ophelia:

By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do’t, if they come to’t;
By cock, they are to blame.

It seems that ‘God’ was more outrageous than ‘cock’!

Ah, but what about the ‘F’ word, I hear you say. Well, it has a surprisingly long history, revealed to me in the occasional digging on the subject by the Open Culture website. Back in 2014, the following bold title appeared: ‘The Very First Use of the F word in English (1528)’. Yes, the phrase ‘fuckin abbot’ appears in the marginalia of Cicero’s De Officiis, a guide to moral conduct. It’s apparently the words of a monk expressing his displeasure at an abbot.

But was that the ‘very first use’? It appears not, if English court records of 1310 hold any weight. As now further revealed by Open Culture, the records include ‘the case of “a man named Roger Fuckebythenavele.” Used three times in the record, the name, says Booth, is probably not a joke made by the scribe but some kind of bizarre nickname, though one hopes not a description of the crime. “Either it refers to an inexperienced copulator, referring to someone trying to have sex with a navel,” says Booth, stating the obvious, “or it’s a rather extravagant explanation for a dimwit, someone so stupid they think that this is the way to have sex.” Our medieval gent had other problems as well. He was called to court three times within a year before being pronounced “outlawed,” which The Independent’s Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith suggests execution but probably refers to banishment.’ (https://www.openculture.com/2025/09/the-earliest-known-appearance-of-the-f-word.html)

Of course, this is clearly not the last word on this word. Considering its use in the court records, the obvious conclusion is that it was already in quite common usage. There are also arguments that it has Germanic origins. The debate will go on.

But where does that leave us with our families? The sensible thing is of course to just go with whatever norms are followed with your children and grandchildren. If that’s a little too stringent for you, then a compromise may be to follow the lead of Father Jack in the Irish comedy series Father Ted and use the expletive ‘feck’! It’s just a word, it’s up to you.

Note: this article first appeared in The Golden Age.