Definition

fuck

The full entry. Pronunciation, inflections, every sense in rough order of age, and the labels a dictionary would attach.

fuck /fʌk/ (Received Pronunciation and General American), /fʊk/ in parts of northern England. Rhymes with duck, luck, stuck.

Inflections: fucks, fucked, fucking; agent noun fucker; adjective fucked; noun fuckery. Register: vulgar slang, taboo. Frequency: among the most common swear words in spoken British and American English. Origin: uncertain; Germanic. See History.

Verb

  1. To have sexual intercourse with. Transitive and intransitive. The literal, original sense. Flen flyys, c. 1475. Now a minority of actual uses.
  2. To damage, ruin, spoil. Usually passive: the engine's fucked. 20th century, common from the 1940s.
  3. To cheat, exploit, or treat unfairly. We got fucked on that deal. Also fuck over.
  4. To meddle or interfere with; to provoke. Don't fuck with the settings. Don't fuck with me.
  5. To go away, dismiss (fuck off). Imperative or narrative: he told them to fuck off; then he fucked off home. Recorded from the 1920s.
  6. To blunder, fail, bungle (fuck up). I fucked up the interview. Recorded 1916 in soldiers' slang.
  7. To waste time, act foolishly (fuck about, fuck around). British and American respectively, both now used everywhere.
  8. To disregard, dismiss: fuck it; fuck that; fuck the lot of them.
  9. Emphatic negation or disbelief: fuck you are (you certainly are not); fuck knows (nobody knows).

Noun

  1. An act of sexual intercourse. A quick fuck.
  2. A sexual partner, judged by performance. A good fuck.
  3. A contemptible or stupid person. You dumb fuck. Also in compounds: fuckwit, fuckhead, fuckface.
  4. The smallest amount of concern or interest. Almost always negated: I don't give a fuck; not a single fuck was given; zero fucks; out of fucks. First recorded in the 1920s, hugely productive since the 2010s.
  5. As an intensifier in wh-questions and emphatic phrases: what the fuck, who the fuck, how the fuck, the fuck out of here, for fuck's sake.
  6. A mess or disaster, in compounds: clusterfuck, mindfuck.

Adjective (fucking, fucked)

  1. fucking: an intensifier expressing anger, contempt or emphasis, with no literal meaning. The fucking car. A fucking genius. The oldest figurative use, 1528.
  2. fucked: ruined, broken, exhausted, doomed, or very drunk. The gearbox is fucked. I'm fucked.
  3. fuck-off: very large (British, attributive): a big fuck-off dog.
  4. fuck-all: nothing, no (British and Irish): there's fuck-all in the fridge.

Adverb (fucking)

  1. Extremely, very. It's fucking cold. He's fucking useless. Fucking hell.
  2. Sentence adverb of emphasis. I fucking told you.

Interjection

  1. Pain, anger or frustration. Fuck!
  2. Surprise or admiration. Fuck me. Fucking hell. Well, fuck.
  3. Hostile dismissal. Fuck you. Fuck off.

Infix

  1. Inserted inside another word before the stressed syllable for emphasis. Abso-fucking-lutely. Un-fucking-believable. Cinde-fucking-rella. See Grammar.

Usage note

In British English the word is rated "strongest" by the broadcast regulator Ofcom and is restricted to after 9pm on television. It is printable in full in most British newspapers when quoted, usually asterisked in the mid-market and tabloid press, and rarely printed at all in mainstream American newspapers. Among friends, in most workplaces with a permissive culture, in fiction, in stand-up comedy and in music, it is ordinary. Directed at a stranger, in front of children, or in formal settings, it is not. See Why we shouldn't and The law.

Related and older synonyms

English has had a long line of words for the literal act. Most are now dead or quaint: swive (Chaucer's word, 14th century), sard (Old English seordan), jape, occupy (so tainted that it fell out of polite use for two centuries), roger, screw, shag (British, now almost affectionate), bonk (1980s British), bang, lay, knock off. None has ever matched fuck for range.