Obiter Dicta

Wednesday April 4^th.

The word ‘cunt’ is an interesting one. I am writing about that this week because at least one reader has objected to my use of it in The Locked Ward. And I have to concede that it is still the one sweary word in English that writers, broadcasters and even standups – okay, most standups - think very seriously about before using . It still shocks. It even shocks a foul-mouthed old sod like me, if I read it or hear it in a context where I would not have expected to find it. (There is some truth in the recent argument that offensive racist words like ‘nigger’ shock more nowadays, but that’s an argument for another blog.)

            Yet why does the C word retain this power? It is, after all, only a word. Four letters. Rhymes with ‘hunt’. The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines it thus:

            cunt > noun vulgar slang a woman’s genitals

            □ an unpleasant or stupid person.

- ORIGIN Middle English: of Germanic origin; related to Norwegian and Swedish dialect kunta, and Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, and Danish dialect kunte.

Kunta kunte. My old Chambers Twentierth century simply defines it as ‘the female genitalia: a term of abuse (vulg.)’ and traces it to Middle English cunte, saying further etymology is dubious. The ‘big’ OED dates the usage of the word as a term of abuse to 1929. Partridge’s Dictionary of Historical Slang records that ‘since c. 1700, it has, except in the reprinting of old classics, been held to be obscene, i.e., a legal offence, to print it in full. It records the Penguin English Dictionary of 1965 to be the first to have ‘the courage to include it’.

            After that, it goes on to list derivatives such as ‘cunt, drunk as a’; ‘cunt, a silly’; ‘cunt face’; ‘cunt-itch’; ‘cunt-struck’ and ‘cunting’, an adjective expressive of disgust, reprobation or violence. Most of which expressions are not unknown to me. I’ve been at least one, and described as at least two.

            I well remember the first time I heard the word. It was used in combination with that other taboo, or ex-taboo, the F word. Playing in the swing park near my grandparents’ house in the late 50s, I saw a boy – a rough, vulgar, working-class boy, certainly – fall off the ‘birler’ (merry go round) and heard him yell aloud his pain. ‘Ya fuckin’  cunter!’ he called. I’d never heard the words and knew nothing of what they meant. But I was strangely attracted to their vicious euphony. I can’t remember what was the immediate cause of my later using  the expression in my father’s company – maybe because there was a power cut in the middle of the TV broadcast of Flash Gordon.  I was inordinately fond of that show. Anyway, I recited my party piece. ‘Ya fuckin’ cunter,’ I said thoughtfully. I woke up ten minutes later on my side on the floor, with a strange ringing sound in my ears.

            Actually, it wasn’t a word I ever used a great deal. Occasionally, in student days. Not much after. Till I went to work in the locked ward. The guys in there used it non-stop. Almost as a synonym for ‘man’ or ‘fellow’.  Three examples:

1) “Aye, I was walking down the street and this old cunt sez to me…”

2) “What do you call the cunt that played the organ in Procul Harum?” 

3)“Tam? Ach, aye, he’s a decent enough cunt.”

            And I have noticed that, in the less salubrious areas of my frequenting, the word has a similar usage. It still can be used in an aggressive or abusive way, of course. But I generally come across it meaning ‘geezer’ or ‘chap’. I’ve even been greeted with it. “Aw right, ya cunt? How ye doin’?”

            Of course, the original meaning is the female genitals. And it has a long literary history. Chaucer uses it in the Miller’s Tale – ‘he caughte hir by the queynte’.  He also has the Wife of Bath use the term. Shakespeare puns on it in Hamlet – ‘Think you I meant country matters?’ and  in Henry V where the French princess confuses the French ‘con’ for the word ‘gown’.

            The feminist movement of the early 70s took strong exception to it, especially as a disparaging generative term for ‘women’. ( I have never used it like that. In fact, no-one of my acquaintance has, either). But you can see what is grossly offensive about it. I had a discussion about calling someone you dislike intensely a ‘cunt’ with a female pal at uni. She, in common with many women, found it offensive that the worst term of abuse one could throw at someone in English was a word for the female genitalia. I said I didn’t like being called ‘a prick’ either, so what was the difference? But she, rightly, pointed out that ‘a prick’ has more overtones of stupidity or silliness than downright hatred. The term ‘cunt’, she said, is one of loathing. By extension, that’s how a man who used that term thought of women. I saw the force of her argument. And I understand why many women still detest the word.

            Latterly, some feminists have sought to reclaim  it. In The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler has a section entitled ‘Reclaiming Cunt’. The one and only wonderful Germaine Greer did something similar in an article called ‘Lady, Love Your Cunt’ and in an insert into the BBC programme about words, ‘Balderdash and Piffle’.

Interestingly, the vulgar usage does have regional variations. I stayed in Canada for a month in 1989 and used the word in a bar. My buddy was quite taken aback. I explained to him what I’ve said a few paragraphs above: that it is in common usage in  my part of the world, both as an abusive term and as aweird filler-word for ‘person’. He looked dubious.

“Don’t you guys use it here like that?” I said.

“No,” he said slowly. “We do use it, but only very rarely. If, for example, your buddy drinks your liquor  when you’re away from home; screws your wife while he’s drinking your liquor; steals your car when he’s drunk on your liquor, and then crashes the car into a tree because he’s drunk on your liquor … That guy’s a cunt.”

            I use it in The Locked Ward whenI quote someone else (not me) swearing.

            Still. At least one reader didn’t like it. But, like Shakey says: ‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.’