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posted by chromas on Tuesday April 07 2020, @10:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the friend dept.

Scotland's claim to fame as birthplace of the F-word revealed:

[...] Experts say the origins of the profanity can be traced all the way back to the 16th century equivalent of a rap battle.

An account of a "flyting" duel between two poets, held in the collection of the National Library of Scotland, is said to be its first recorded use anywhere in the world.

The hour-long BBC Scotland programme, which airs on Tuesday[1], sees actress, singer and theatre-maker Cora Bissett[2] trace the nation's long love affair with swearing and insults, despite the long-standing efforts of religious leaders to condemn it as a sin.

[...] [The documentary] In Scotland – Contains Strong Language, [explores] the Bannatyne Manuscript, one of the most important collections of medieval Scottish literature, which was compiled by the Edinburgh merchant George Bannatyne in 1568 when a plague struck the city and he was forced to stay at home.

The collection contains The Flyting Of Dunbar And Kennedy, an account by the poet William Dunbar of a duel with Walter Kennedy, said to have been conducted in Edinburgh before the court of King James IV of Scotland in around 1500.

[...] A spokeswoman for the National Library said: "The Bannatyne Manuscript[3] is a collection of some 400 poems compiled by the young Edinburgh merchant George Bannatyne in the last months of 1568, when an outbreak of plague in Edinburgh compelled him to stay indoors. It is one of the most important surviving sources of Older Scots poetry.

"The manuscript remained in his descendants' possession until they gifted it to the National Library's predecessor – in 1772.

[...] "It has long been known that the manuscript contains some strong swearwords that are now common in everyday language, although at the time, they were very much used in good-natured jest.

[1] Scotland—Contains Strong Language
[2] Cora Bissett
[3] Bannatyne Manuscript

From Ars Technica's 500-year-old manuscript contains earliest known use of the "F-word":

Flyting is a poetic genre in Scotland—essentially a poetry slam or rap battle, in which participants exchange creative insults with as much verbal pyrotechnics (doubling and tripling of rhymes, lots of alliteration) as they can muster. (It's a safe bet Shakespeare excelled at this art form.)

Dunbar and Kennedy supposedly faced off for a flyting in the court of James IV of Scotland around 1500, and their exchange was set down for posterity in Bannatyne's manuscript. In the poem, Dunbar makes fun of Kennedy's Highland dialect, for instance, as well as his personal appearance, and he suggests his opponent enjoys sexual intercourse with horses. Kennedy retaliates with attacks on Dunbar's diminutive stature and lack of bowel control, suggesting his rival gets his inspiration from drinking "frogspawn" from the waters of a rural pond. You get the idea.

And then comes the historic moment: an insult containing the phrase "wan fukkit funling," marking the earliest known surviving record of the F-word.

George Carlin, in his inimitable way, has an erudite exposition on its use in a wide variety of grammatical categories. Warning, contains vulgarities.


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  • (Score: 2) by bd on Wednesday April 08 2020, @03:28PM

    by bd (2773) on Wednesday April 08 2020, @03:28PM (#980284)

    Interesting. "neuken" sounds similar to German "necken" (to tease).

    There are so many similarities between European languages...

    Just checking wiktionary, in German, before standardized language / orthography, "ficken", "facken", or "fucken" used to mean reaming, grinding, moving something forward and backward repeatedly.
    For some reason, in Germany, these purely technical terms shifted to a sexual interpretation during the 16th century, leading to the modern "ficken" (to fuck).

    Scandinavian languages also have similar words with sexual connotation, derived from proto-Germanic "fukkona".

    I guess it could also just have been a parallel development from similar roots, or maybe french "ficher" (ram down/hammer down). But how would you derive a sexual connotation from that...

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