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Features

The earliest use of the F-word

by Medievalists.net
August 22, 2023

An English historian has come across the word ‘fuck’ in a court case dating to the year 1310, making it the earliest known reference to the swear word.

Paul Booth of Keele University spotted the name ‘Roger Fuckebythenavele’ in the Chester County Court Plea Rolls for November 3, 1310. He was part of a long list of people that were supposed to be arrested by authorities, but could not be found. Over the next year he would be named in the records six more times,  and because he could not be found, the court declared him an outlaw that was to be arrested. The final mention of Roger appears on September 28, 1311, with the sheriff still looking for him.

How did Roger get the surname ‘Fuckebythenavele’? Paul Booth believes it comes from ‘fuck through the navel’ or ‘fuck next to the navel’, with two possible explanations:

The first, and most injurious to Roger’s reputation, suggests that he is either a man who has tried to have sexual intercourse through his partner’s navel, rather than through the vagina in the usual way, or is so stupid that he thinks that this is the right way to copulate. The second meaning could refer to an act of frottage, in which Roger rubbed his penis against his partner’s belly button, possibly in order to avoid conception, which would at least have exonerated him from the charges of naivety or idiocy. Although it is just possible that the name means ‘strike upon the belly’, I feel there can be no doubt that the word ‘fuck’ as employed in this name, written seven times with some minor differences in spelling, has the sexual connotation. 

Prior to Dr. Booth’s discovery, the previous earliest use of the word was in the poem Flen flyys, written around 1475. It had a line that read “fvccant vvivys of heli”, a Latin/English mix meaning “…they fuck the wives of Ely.” Historians have come across earlier uses of the word in medieval England, but have doubted that it was being used as a sexual reference. For example, the name John le Fucker appears in 1278, but this likely could be just a different spelling for the word ‘fulcher’ which means soldier. There is also to reference to a place known as ‘Fockynggrove’ in Bristol, which was recorded around 1373.

Cheshire County Court Rolls - TNA CHES 29/23 - photo by Paul Booth
Cheshire County Court Rolls – TNA CHES 29/23 – photo by Paul Booth

In his book, The F Word, Jesse Sheidlower explains “fuck is a word of Germanic origin. It is related to words in several other Germanic languages, such as Dutch, German, and Swedish, that have sexual meanings as well as meaning such as ‘to strike’ or ‘to move back and forth’.”

During his research into these records from Chester, Dr. Booth also found other possible sexual nicknames, such as ‘Lirepynrel’, which means ‘irresponsible penis’. His article, “An early fourteenth-century use of the F-word in Cheshire, 1310-11,” appears in Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 164 (2015).

Dr Paul Booth is the Honourary Senior Research Fellow in History at Keele University and Co-Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Project: Gascon Rolls, 1317-1468.

Roger Fuckbythenavel
‘Roger Fuckebythenavel’ as seen in the Cheshire County Court Rolls – TNA CHES 29/23 – photo by Paul Booth

See also: By God’s Bones: Medieval Swear Words

Top Image: Luttrell Psalter – British Library MS Add. 42130, fol.66r

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