WARNING: this contains rough language. Not in order to curse and swear, but to explain the Dutch background of many a coarse word in America. Fuck, shit, cunt, motherfucker. You are probably used to hearing these around you, but if not, get used to it anyway. These words are not going to go away anytime soon.
That’s in part because the public discourse in America, and hence also in the rest of the world, will not soon cool off, but more likely heat up further. And an even bigger reason is that all those words are centuries old. Dutch sailors in the Golden Age brought them to America. The only thing that has changed since then was that, like so many other Dutch words adopted by the English language, they have acquired an accent, to make them sound English.
Fuck: the Oxford Dictionary tells us that it stems from old-Dutch fokkelen. Webster sticks to simply fokken. Both words indicate procreation, resp. the act of procreation. It was especially enjoyed by soldiers in both World Wars, though more likely as its adjective: “Get your f-ing rifles!” It was, as Melissa Mohr writes in her book Holy Sh*t, A Brief History of Swearing, so normal by way of expressing a release between guys who were under a permanent tense pressure that soon nobody really noticed. It wasn’t until the sergeant hissed, “Get your rifles!”, that apparently something urgent was going on.
THE DUTCH counterpart of fuck as an expletive has, remarkably enough, never turned into neuk or neuken, which is the direct Dutch translation. It is considered an uncivilized word, but no one in Holland who hits his thumb with a hammer shouts, Neuk! That would more likely come out as Kut! Americans translate that word into cunt, or as decent families would call it, the ugly C-word. Kut and cunt are originally the same word, just like kont, now translated as ass, but once also referring to the female genital area.
The background is interesting: it comes from the Dutch verb kennen, English know, in the biblical sense of Genesis 4:1: “Adam knew Eve,” meaning that he made love to her, and she became pregnant. In England still a river runs named Kennet, formerly Cunnit, dedicated to an ancient goddess of fertility.
CURSING, for the record, has a function. It discharges tension, and it helps with pain. A university asked two groups of people to put their hands in ice water, telling one group to be silent or only utter neutral words, the other group to swear to their heart’s content. The cursers lasted twice as long and also stated afterward that the cold was not too bad. Swearing, insists Harvard psychologist-philosopher Steven Pinker, is perfectly acceptable at all those times in your life where there is no sensible path for politeness.
That’s why it’s okay to say shit in a moment of shock. It is what it says it is, poop, crap, but originally just Dutch schijt. People born with the English language in their throats can’t get the guttural -ch and the -g out properly, hence shit and not schit. They do not have that excuse for taking over the Dutch word moeder, which they turned into mother. Hence, motherfucker is actually a double Dutch swear word, the ugliest of the four we’re examining here. But at least we can say in good conscience that Americans came up with that combination themselves. Their excuse is that klootzak never caught on. Tough noogies.
