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Cunt (IPA:/kʌnt/) is an English language vulgarism referring generally to the female genitalia, specifically the Cleft of Venus. The earliest citation of this usage in the Oxford English Dictionary, circa 1230, refers to the London street known as "Gropecunt Lane".

"Cunt" is also used informally as a derogatory epithet in referring to either sex, but this usage is relatively recent, dating back only as far as the late nineteenth century. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines "cunt" as "an unpleasant or stupid person", whereas Merriam-Webster defines the term as "a disparaging term for a woman" and "a woman regarded as a sexual object"; the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English defines it as "a despicable man".

The word appears to have been in common usage from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century. After a period of disuse, usage became more frequent in the twentieth century and, in particular, in parallel with the rise of popular literature and pervasive media. The term also has various other derived uses and, like "fuck" and its derivatives, has been used mutatis mutandis as noun, pronoun, adjective, participle and other parts of speech.

Etymology

Although it has been said that "etymologists are unlikely to come to an agreement about the origins of cunt any time soon", it is most often thought to derive from a Germanic word (Proto-Germanic *kunton), which appeared as kunta in Old Norse, although the Proto-Germanic form itself is of uncertain origin. In Middle English it appeared with many different spellings such as cunte and queynte, which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation of the word. There are cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish, Faroese and Old Norwegian dialect kunta; West Frisian and Middle Low German kunte; Middle Dutch conte; Dutch kut; Middle Low German kutte; Middle High German kotze (prostitute); German kott, and perhaps Old English cot. While kont in Dutch refers to the buttocks, kut is considered far less offensive in Dutch-speaking areas than cunt is in the English speaking world. The etymology of the Proto-Germanic term is disputed. It may have arisen by Grimm's law operating on the Proto-Indo-European root *gen/gon = "create, become" seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Proto-Indo-European root *gneH₂/guneH₂ (Greek gunê) = "woman" seen in gynaecology. Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus (vulva), and its derivatives French con, Spanish coño, and Portuguese cona, have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus: cuneatus, wedge-shaped; cuneo v. fasten with a wedge; (figurative) to wedge in, squeeze in, leading to English words such as cuneiform (wedge-shaped).

The word in its modern meaning is attested in Middle English. Proverbs of Hendyng, a manuscript from sometime before 1325 includes the advice:

Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.
(Give your cunt wisely and make (your) demands after the wedding.)

Offensiveness

Generally

The word "cunt" is generally regarded in English-speaking countries as unsuitable in normal public discourse and has been described as "the most heavily tabooed word of all English words", although John Ayto, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Slang, has disputed this, saying

Ethnic slurs are regarded as the taboo ... Nigger is far more taboo than fuck or even cunt. I think if a politician were to be heard off-camera saying fuck, it would be trivial, but if he said nigger, that would be the end of his career.

Use of the word is also documented as the argot of some sections of society and in recent years attempts have been made to mitigate its connotations by promoting positive uses.

Feminist perspectives

Some radical feminists of the 1970s sought to eliminate disparaging terms for women, including "bitch" and "cunt". In the context of pornography, Catherine MacKinnon argued that use of the word acts to reinforce a dehumanisation of women by reducing them to mere body parts; and in 1979 Andrea Dworkin described the word as reducing women to "the one essential - 'cunt: our essence ... our offence'".

Despite criticisms, there is a movement within feminists that seeks to reclaim cunt not only as acceptable, but as an honorific, in much the same way that queer has been reclaimed by LGBT people. Proponents include Inga Muscio in her book, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence and Eve Ensler in "Reclaiming Cunt" from The Vagina Monologues.

The word was similarly reclaimed by Angela Carter who used it in the title story of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; a female character describing female genitalia in a pornography book: "her cunt a split fig below the great globes of her buttocks".

Germaine Greer, who had previously published a magazine article entitled "Lady, Love Your Cunt", discussed the origins, usage and power of the word in the BBC series Balderdash and Piffle. She suggests at the end of the piece that there is something precious about the word, in that it is now one of the few remaining words in English that still retains its power to shock.

Usage: pre-20th century

Cunt has been in common use in its anatomical meaning since at least the 13th century. While Francis Grose's 1785 A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue listed the word as "C**T: a nasty name for a nasty thing", it did not appear in any major dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1961, when it was included in Webster's Third New International Dictionary with the comment "usu. considered obscene". Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1972, which cites the word as having been in use since 1230 in what was supposedly a current London street name of "Gropecunte Lane." It was however also used before 1230 having been brought over by the Anglo-Saxons, originally not an obscenity but rather a factual name for the vulva or vagina. "Gropecunt Lane" was originally a street of prostitution, indicating a middle ages red light district. It was normal in those times for streets to be named after the goods available for sale therein, hence the prevalence in cities having a medieval history of names such as "Silver Street", "Fish Street", and "Swinegate" (pork butchers). In some locations, the former name has been Bowdlerised, as in the City of York, to the more acceptable "Grape Lane".

The word appears several times in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be considered obscene at this point, since it is used openly. A notable use is from the Miller's Tale "Pryvely he caught her by the queynte." The Wife of Bath also uses this term, "For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave/You shall have queynte right enough at eve ... What aileth you to grouche thus and groan?/Is it for ye would have my queynte alone?" In modernised versions of these passages the word "queynte" is usually translated simply as "cunt". However, in Chaucer's usage there seems to be an overlap between the words "cunt" and "quaint" (possibly derived from the Latin for "known"). "Quaint" was probably pronounced in Middle English in much the same way as "cunt." It is sometimes unclear whether the two words were thought of as distinct from one another. Elsewhere in Chaucer's work the word queynte seems to be used with meaning comparable to the modern "quaint" (charming, appealing).

By Shakespeare's day, the word seems to have become obscene. Although Shakespeare does not use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still plays with it, using wordplay to sneak it in obliquely. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet, as the castle's residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play, Hamlet asks Ophelia, "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Ophelia, of course, replies, "No, my lord." Hamlet, feigning shock, says, "Do you think I meant country matters?" Then, to drive home the point that the accent is definitely on the first syllable of country, Shakespeare has Hamlet say, "That's a fair thought, to lie between maids' legs." Also see Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V): "There be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps." A related scene occurs in Henry V: when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the "gros et impudique" English words "foot" and "gown," which her English teacher has mispronounced as "coun." It is usually argued that Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard "foot" as "foutre" (French, "fuck") and "coun" as "con" (French "cunt", also used to mean "idiot"). Similarly John Donne alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem The Good-Morrow, referring to sucking on "country pleasures".

The 1675 Restoration comedy The Country Wife also features such wordplay, even in its title.

By the 17th century a softer form of the word, "cunny", came into use. A well known use of this derivation can be found in the 25 October 1668 entry of the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was discovered having an affair with Deborah Willet: he wrote that his wife "coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also....".

Cunny was probably derived from a pun on coney, meaning "rabbit", rather as pussy is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Massinger: "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'") Largely because of this usage, the word coney to refer to rabbits changed pronunciation from short "o" (like money and honey) to long "o" (cone, as in Coney Island), and has now almost completely disappeared from most dialects of English; in the same way the word "pussy" is now rarely used in America to refer to a cat.

Robert Burns used the word in his Merry Muses of Caledonia, a collection of bawdy verses which he kept to himself and were not publicly available until the mid-1960s. In "Yon, Yon, Yon, Lassie", this couplet appears: "For ilka birss upon her cunt, Was worth a ryal ransom".

Usage: modern

In modern literature

James Joyce was one of the first of the major 20th-century novelists to put the word "cunt" into print. In the context of one of the central characters in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, Joyce refers to the Dead Sea and to

... the oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.

Joyce uses the word figuratively rather than literally; but while Joyce used the word only once in Ulysses, with four other wordplays ('cunty') on it, D. H. Lawrence used the word ten times in Lady Chatterley's Lover, in a more direct sense. Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley:

If your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after.

The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution for obscenity in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books.

• Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer uses the word extensively, ensuring its banning in Britain between 1934 and 1961 and being the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, 378 U.S. 577 (1964).
• Samuel Beckett was an associate of Joyce, and in his Malone Dies (1956), he writes: "His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her cunt, that trump card of young wives."
• In Ian McEwan's 2001 novel Atonement, the word is used in a love letter mistakenly sent instead of a revised version, and although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.

Usage by Meaning

Referring to women

In referring to a woman, cunt is an abusive term usually considered the most offensive word in that context and even more forceful than bitch. In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he doesn't like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, "she's something of a cunt, ain't she, Doc?" It can also be used to imply that the sexual act is the primary function of a woman; for example, see below in relation to Saturday Night Fever.

In 2004, University of Colorado president Elizabeth Hoffman fanned the flames of a football rape case when, during a deposition, she was asked if she thought "cunt" was a "filthy and vile" word. She replied that it was a "swear word" but she had "actually heard it used as a term of endearment". A spokesperson later clarified that Hoffman meant the word had polite meanings in its original use centuries ago. In the rape case, a CU football player had allegedly called female player Katie Hnida a "fucking lovely cunt".

Similarly, during the UK Oz trial for obscenity in 1971, prosecuting counsel asked writer George Melly "Would you call your 10-year-old daughter a cunt?" Melly replied "No, because I don't think she is."

Referring to men

Frederic Manning's 1929 book The Middle Parts of Fortune, set in World War I, is a vernacular account of the lives of ordinary soldiers and describes regular use of the word by British Tommies. The word is invariably used to describe men:

And now the bastard's wearin' the bes' pair slung round ‘is own bloody neck. Wouldn't you've thought the cunt would ‘a' give me vingt frong for ‘em anyway? What's the cunt want to come down 'ere buggering us about for, 'aven't we done enough bloody work in th' week?

Whilst normally derogatory in English-speaking countries, the word has an informal use, even being used as a term of endearment. Like the word fuck, use between youths is not uncommon, as exemplified by its use in the film Trainspotting, where it is an integral part of the common language of the principal characters.

Referring to inanimate objects

Cunt is used extensively in Australia, Ireland and also in some parts of the UK as a replacement noun, more commonly among males and the working classes, similar to the use of motherfucker or son of a bitch among some Americans in extremely casual settings. For instance, "The cunt of a thing won't start," in reference to an automobile; or "Pass me that cunt," meaning "Pass me that item I need"; or "Those cunts down the road," referring to people in the vicinity. When used in this sense, the word does not necessarily imply contempt nor is it necessarily intended to be offensive.

Other uses

The word is sometimes used as a general expletive to show frustration, annoyance or anger, for example "I've had a cunt of a day!", "This is a cunt to finish".

Australians have a habit of pairing the word with another to give a more specific meaning such as cunt-rash (visible disorder of the female genitalia, again normally a general insult). The phrase "sick cunt" is sometimes used as a compliment by such sub-groups as Australian surfers, although the term originated within non-Australian groups who combined their use of the term "sick" with what they saw as a typically Aussie expletive.

A modern derivative adjective, cuntish (alternatively, cuntacious), meaning frustrating, awkward, or (when describing behavior) selfish, is increasingly used in England and has begun to appear in other regions, such as Scotland and Ireland.

Cunting is routinely used as an intensifying modifier, much like fucking. It can also be used as a slang term for criticism as in "Did you see the cunting he got for saying that?"

The word cunty is also known, although used rarely: a line from Hanif Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette is the definition of England by a Pakistani immigrant as "eating hot buttered toast with cunty fingers," suggestive of hypocrisy and a hidden sordidness or immorality behind the country's quaint façade. This term is attributed to British novelist Henry Green.

Cunted can mean to be extremely under the influence of drink and/or drugs.

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