Cunt

Cunt, referring to female genitalia, is one of the most taboo four-letter words in the English language. This is because it is considered offensive both by religious prudes and feminist prudes, which means very few people can safely say it without offending someone in their business or social circles. It also tends to offend girls from middle school to college age in the United States because they just know that assholes use it to be deliberately hurtful (much like the N-word). Calling a young lady this is an excellent way to get slapped or kicked in the balls.
As perhaps the most powerful force in the universe, it has many other names.Wordlist Love Your Vagina (archived from 7 Jul 2013 13:07:10 UTC).
==Etymologies==
The vagina is a wonderful place from which most of us came, and where many of us try to return to as often as possible. The word vagina simply means "sheath" in Latin, and it has been in use in English for more than three centuries.The oldest example of "vagina" in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from 1682, pre-dating the first use of the word Penis by around two years "Cunt," by comparison, is a legitimate non-slang word with an extremely long history. The earliest known usages were as place names, e.g. Cuntelowe, Warwickshire in 1221 and Gropecuntelane, Oxford and London in 1230)"cunt, n.", Oxford English Dictionary. Gropecuntelane was where the brothels were located.Etymology Online Nice! The Middle English word "quentye" had several homonymous meanings, including 'pleasing-thing' and 'clever'.The Riverside Chaucer From this root we also derive the word 'quaint'.
"Cunt" has several cognates in other languages:
* cunnus in Latin, from Proto-Indo-European *kut-noscunnus, in T. G. Tucker, Etymological Dictionary of Latin (Halle, 1931, repr. Ares Publishers, 1985) ISBN 0-89005-172-0
** con in French
** cona in Portuguese
** coño in modern Spanish
* κύσθος (kysthos), in Greek
* kunta in old Norse, modern Norwegian, Swedish
* kunte in Danish, Middle Low German
* kut in Dutch
* quim in English
* queynte in Middle English
Ultimately, it derives from the Proto-Indo-European stem *gwen-, meaning "woman" (giving it the literal meaning of "womanly bits" and thus cognate with such words as "gynecologist" and "banshee"). The word also has resemblances to "cunabula," a cradle and "cunicle," an obsolete word for a passage. The Romans extended the use of cunnus to mean whore in much the same way that English speakers used "cunt" as a pejorative term for "woman", as well as for a woman's anatomical parts.Rawson, H. (1981), A Dictionary of euphemisms and other doubletalk, Macdonald This usage has now evolved into an abusive derogatory term which has given "cunt" an entirely new meaning,The Urban Dictionary only admits of the term being abusive towards women particularly when applied to men as well as women.
==Usage==
Cunt is used — particularly by non–American English speakers — in a wide variety of situations, as well as in the more traditional usage in reference to the pudenda. Beginning with the most traditional use, examples include:
*"She had a lovely cunt."
*"She's a complete cunt."
*"He's a fucking cunt."
*"What kind of a stupid cunt do you think I am?" (may be used by either gender)
*"This cunting spanner doesn't fit any of these fucking lug nuts."
*"Barcelona want Cesc for 30mil, the fucking cunts."
*"Cunt cunt cunt the cuntin' cunt" (Australian)
*"Oh the everyday life of glorious Chinese cunts." (天朝木耳的日常, Chinese Manosphere)
==Shock value==
 
Along with other words expressing bigotry, it is widely considered to be the most offensive word in English (at least in the USThe most offensive American swear words ranked by Breanna Robinson (Mar 20, 2022) Indy100. and UKThis is Ofcom's ranking of swear words in order of offensiveness: "Oh, f**k, wank, bugger, shitting, arse, head and hole." by Bea Mitchell (9 Feb 2018) Digital Spy.), above the likes of "motherfucker" and "fuck," but its use and the public exposure to such language has degraded what such a prominent position means. One indication of the shock value of the word is the in which AOL blocked residents from Scunthorpe, England from creating accounts in 1996.AOL censors British town's name! by Clive Feather (7 Apr 1996 15:28:52 +0100 BST) The Risks Digest.
Mark Lawson, writing in The Guardian (February 5, 2004), contends that the word has now lost its power to shock, at least in England.Has swearing lost its power to shock? This was following an outburst from punk icon John Lydon (one time member of the Sex Pistols), who, at 10:30 PM on February 4, 2004, during a mainstream live British television transmission of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! (a reality show in which failing celebrities degrade themselves for tabloid attention) accused the voting audience at home of being "fucking cunts" for failing to choose him as that night's loser. Fewer than 100 complaints were received by ITV1 (the broadcaster) and Ofcom (the regulatory authority) combined — contrasted with the many thousands that complained about the blasphemy contained in Jerry Springer: The Opera at around the same time. However, swearing of any kind still generates steady complaints before the "watershed" time of 9:00 PM. Australians continue to use the word as a sort of hyphen.9 Outrageous Words That Are Said Every Day In Australia by Brad Esposito (20 Feb 2014) BuzzFeed News.
==Cunt in popular culture==
*In 1975, lesbian and artist Tee Corinne published the Cunt Coloring Book,Cunt Coloring Book: Drawings by Tee Corinne (1975) Pearlchild Productions. as an attempt to reclaim the word as something positive and to show the beauty and diversity of cunts. Some later editions of the book were published as Labiaflowers.Labiaflowers: A Coloring Book by Tee Corinne (1981) The Naiad Press. ISBN 0930044207.Corinne, Tee (1943-2006) by Tamsin Wilton (2002) glbtq Encyclopedia Project.
*One of the many segments of The Vagina Monologues is called "I Call it Cunt".
*"See You Next Tuesday" (C U Next Tuesday) is a catty backronym (acronym back-formation),"Backronym", Wiktionary.] sometimes used intentionally.
*The Clash, in keeping with their observed policy of using one swear word per album, use the line "all the young cunts" several times in their song "All the Young Punks" on Give 'Em Enough Rope.
*Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, regularly uses the term "cunt" in place of other male pronouns in his novels.
*In The Thick of It, Malcolm Tucker uses the word cunt — a lot.
*Not forgetting, of course, that book with the daisy.Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio (2002) Seal Press, 2nd edition. ISBN 1580050751.
*In 2016, Samantha Bee gave her "Thunder Cunt" award T-Shirt to CNN host Jake Tapper "for making cable news bearable".And the Thunder Cunt Goes To… by Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (Dec 5, 2016) YouTube. In 2018, she called Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt".
File:Cunt Coloring Books.jpg|Use your imagination!
File:Cunt A Declaration of Independence.jpg|Please do eat the daisies
File:Labia pride activist street art.jpg|Grabbing the word back for feminism
File:Womens-march-santa-cruz-2017- 01.jpg|Country matters… Santa Cruz Women's March, 2017
==Trivia==
* In the first century BCE, Cicero held that cunnus should be avoided as being obscene.
* The City of London (ca. 1230 CE), and other English towns and cities, once boasted a Gropecuntelane. It has since been renamed Threadneedle Street, a Victorian euphemism for sexual intercourse. It is the current location of the Bank of England. Many consider this oddly appropriate.
* Chaucer used the word unblushingly in his Canterbury Tales (1387-1400). The Wife of Bath in her tale, says:
**What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone?
**Os it for ye wolde have my queynte allone?
* In Twelfth Night (1600-1601) by William Shakespeare, the steward Malvolio, upon picking up a letter, attempts to decipher it:
**By my life, this is my lady's hand. 
**These be her very C's her U's and [here "and" could substitute for "N"]
** Her Ts, and thus she makes her great P's.
* In Hamlet (1603) by William Shakespeare, the title character uses "country matters" as a thinly-veiled euphemism. 
** HAMLET: (lying down at OPHELIA's feet) Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
** OPHELIA: No, my lord.
** HAMLET: I mean, my head upon your lap?
** OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.
** HAMLET: Do you think I meant country matters?
** OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.
** HAMLET: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
** OPHELIA: What is, my lord?
** HAMLET: Nothing.
*In The Royal Angler of Windsor, a ditty on the Subject of Nell Gwyn, Charles II's mistress, John, Wilmott, 2nd Earl of Rochester writes:
**However weak and slender be the string,
**Bait it with Cunt, and it will hold a king.
* By the time that Robert Burns came to write his Merrie Muses of Caledonia (ca. 1800), the use of the word was expurgated from the text:
** For ilka hair upon her c___t
** Was worth a royal ransom.
* The word was used several times in the first part of the 20th century by authors such as D. H. Lawrence in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), and James Joyce, in Ulysses (1922), in which he describes the Dead Sea as "… the grey silken cunt of the Holy Land". However, it was not until Lady Chatterley's Lover was finally cleared for full publication in 1959 (US) and 1960 (UK) that the word "cunt" could once again be used in mainstream literature.
* The word is still taboo on mainstream British television, but Kenny Everett, had a character called "Cupid Stunt" while Rik Mayall played a character called A. Cnut.Believe Nothing There was also a Monty Python sketch in which a character who was able to pronounce the letter k but not the letter c (which he mispronounced as b) was advised to use ks in place of hard cs. For his own failure to think of this, the character then self-deprecatingly referred to himself as a "silly bunt". This line only appeared in live performances of the sketch and recordings thereof; presumably it was too salacious for television.
*To call someone a "burk" or "berk" is a closeted way of calling them a cunt, using the rhyming slang of "Berkshire hunt". It is worth noting that, despite its etymology, this term is not regarded as being anywhere near as offensive as the word cunt.
*The London Times bans this word in its personal ads. Back in the 1960s, some ingenious woman evaded the ban by posting "See you when tea is ready, my darling."
*Similarly, "dropkick" is rhyming slang, short for "dropkick punt". (Australia)
*
::Come love, and dwell with me
::Under the greenwood tree,
::None can more happy be,
::Than I shall be if blessed with thee!
:::(Quoted in Pearsall 1969, 495)Read more: Victorian Age — Charles — JRank Articles 
==See also==
*Sexual intercourse
*Yoni
*Dick
*
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Anatomy
Category:Sexuality
Category:Sexism
Category:Language