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David Wilton wrote: Popular etymologies agree, unfortunately incorrectly, that ★■◆● is an acronym meaning either Fornication under Consent of the King or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. These tales tell of how people required special permission in order to procreate or how medieval prisoners, guilty of adultury or other sex crimes, were forced to wear this word on their clothing.

Tracing the etymology of ★■◆● is difficult, as it has been under a taboo for most of its existence and early citations of the word are rare. The earliest known use is from ca. 1475 in a poem written in a mix of Latin and English and entitled Flen flyys. The relevant lines read: "Non sunt in celi / quia fuccant uuiuys of heli." Translated it reads: "They [the monks] are not in heaven / because they ★■◆● the wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge]." Fuccant is a pseudo-Latin word and in the original manuscript it is written in cipher to further disguise it.

Some sources cite an alleged appearance of the word in 1278 as a personal name, John le ****er. The problem with this is that no one has properly identified the document this name supposedly appears in, and it may not be turly a thirteenth-century citation. The alleged 1278 name can only be traced to 1949, when it was mentioned in Carl Buck's dictionary of Indo-European roots. Unfortunately, Buck never identifies the source so we cannot check its validity or the context in which the name appears. The belief that this thirteenth-century name is the origin of the word ★■◆● got a boost in 1990 when John Ayto uncritically repeated Buck's claim in his Dictonary of Word Origins. Buck's dictionary is a rather arcane source, not very familiar to the public. Ayto's, however, is geared for the general reader and is widely cited.

If this name is real and does indeed date to 1278, there is still no guarantee that this is an instance of the word ★■◆●. Instead, the name is more likely a variant on the surname Fulcher (soldier). Other thirteenth-century spellings of that or similar names include Fuker, Foucher, Fucher, Foker, and Foucar. It is almost certain that this is just another spelling of that name.

Such is the nature of taboo words; they defy the best efforts to find their roots since, because they are taboo, no one writes them down. Without written citations, tracing the origin of a word is impossible.

Shakespeare is a source for the origins of many words, but he does not use this one, although he does hint at it from time to time for comic effect, letting us know the word was well known in Elizabethan times. In Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) he gives us the pun focative case. In Henry IV (IV.iv), the character Pistol threatens to firk a French soldier, a word meaning to strike, but commonly used as an Elizabethan euphamism for ★■◆●. In the same play (III.iv), Princess Katherine confuses the English words foot and gown for the French foutre and cown (★■◆● and ★■◆●, respectively) with comic results. Other poets and writers do use the word, although its appearances are rare. Robert Burns, for example, uses it in an unpublished manuscript.

The taboo was so strong that for 170 years, from 1795 to 1965, ★■◆● did not appear in a single general dictionary of the English language. As late as 1948, the publishers of The Naked and the Dead persuaded Norman Mailer to use the euphamism fug instead, resulting in Dorothy Parker's alleged comment upon meeting mailer: "So you're the man who can't spell ★■◆●." ★■◆● does not begin to appear with any frequency in published sources until the 1960s.

The root is undoubtedly Germanic, as it has cognates in other Northern European languages: Middle Dutch fokken meaning to thrust, to copulate with; dialectal Norwegian fukka meaning to copulate; and dialectal Swedish focka meaning to strike, push, copulate, and fock meaning penis. Both French and Italian havesimilar words, foutre and fottere, respectively. These derive from the Latin futuere.

While these cognates exist, they are not the source of ★■◆●. Rather all these words probably come from a common root. Most of the early known usages of the English word come from Scotland, leading some scholars to believe that the word comes from Scandanavian sources, because the Viking influence on English was stronger in Scotland and the north of England. Others disagree, believing that the number of northern citations reflects that the taboo was weaker in Scotland and the north, resulting in more surviving usages. The fact that there are citations from the same period, albeit fewer of them, from southern England seems to bear out this latter theory.

Before we depart from the discussion of this word, we have to touch upon another popular legend about its origin. During the Hundred Years War, he French would cut the middle finger off the hands of captured English archers so that they could no longer draw the strings of their deadly yew longbows. Because of this, English archers would taunt the French by raising their middle fingers and exclaiming that they could "pluck yew", hence the four-letter word.

Now this is obviously a joke, a pun. It is doubtful that whoever came up with this howler meant for it to be taken seriously. But this joke has gained urban legend status thanks to the internet. Its canonical version began appearing on the internet in December of 1996:

The "Car Talk" show (on NPR) with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, have a feature called the "Puzzler." Their most recent "Puzzler" was about the Battle of Agincourt. The French, who were overwhelmingly favorted to win the battle, threatened to cut a certain body part off all captured English soldiers so that they could never fight again. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. The puzzler was: What was the body part? This is the answer submitted by a listener:

Dear Click and Clack:

Thank you for the Agincourt "Puzzler," which clears up some profound questions of etymology, folklore, and emotional symbolism. The body part which the French proposed to cut off the English after defeating them was, of course, the middle finger, without which it is impossible to draw the renowned English longbow. This famous weapon was made of the English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking yew". This, when the victorious English waved their middle fingers at the defeated French, they said, "See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!"

Over the years, some "folk etymologies" have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Since "pluck yew" is rather difficult to say (like "pleasant mother pheasant plucker", which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows), the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to the labiodental fricative "f", and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird".

But this version does not accurately reflect what was said on the National Public Radio program Car Talk. Each week on the program, the hosts, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, present a "puzzler," a riddle or puzzle that is often humorous. The puzzler in question, which was asked on Marck 21 1996, and the answer given the next week on March 28, made no mention of "plucking yew" and was not even about the middle-finger gesture. Instead, the gesture in question was about the "V for Victory" sign, and the story had the French cutting off both the index and middle fingers of the English archers they had captured. The Magliozzis did make mention that some believed it was just one finger that was cut off and that another gesture might have had its origin at Agincourt, ut that is as far as they went. The letter given in the canonical version may have been sent to the Magliozzis, but it was not read on the air. Sometime between the show's airing in March and the appearance of the letter on the internet in December the story had changed, and the "pluck yew" aspect was added.

Such is the nature of urban legends; the details are highly malleable as long as they are part of oral tradition. But once the legend is transmited in written form, whether via fax, photocopy, or internet, it becomes stable and changes are harder to introduce.