fuck
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "fuck", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "fuck" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "fuck" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
fuck is aEnglishverb. It means: To have sexual intercourse; to copulate. Pronounced /fʌk/. It ranks #396 in English word frequency. Often confused with fun and fur.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fuck |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /fʌk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #396 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fuck is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fʌk/. Corpus data places it at rank #396 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for fuck, with forms such as "fcuk", "ffuck", and "fucck". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fun", "fur", "fut", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *pewǵ- Proto-Germanic *fukkōną Old English *fuccian Middle English *fukken English fuck From Middle English *fukken, probably of Germanic origin: either from Old English *fuccian or Old Norse *fukka, both from Proto-German… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is fuck, spelled F-U-C-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To have sexual intercourse; to copulate.
- 2To have sexual intercourse; to copulate.
- 3To have sexual intercourse; to copulate.
- 4To have sexual intercourse; to copulate.
- 5To have sexual intercourse; to copulate.
- 6To put in an extremely difficult or impossible situation.
- 7To defraud, deface, or otherwise treat badly.
- 8Used to express great displeasure with, or contemptuous dismissal of, someone or something.
- 9To break, to destroy.
- 10Used in a phrasal verb: fuck with (“to play with, to tinker”).
- 11To throw, to lob something. (angrily)
- 12To scold.
- 13To be very good, to rule, go hard.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *pewǵ- Proto-Germanic *fukkōną Old English *fuccian Middle English *fukken English fuck From Middle English *fukken, probably of Germanic origin: either from Old English *fuccian or Old Norse *fukka, both from Proto-Germanic *fukkōną, from Proto-Indo-European *pewǵ- (“to strike, punch, stab”). Compare windfucker and its debated etymology. Possibly attested in a 772 CE charter that mentions a place called Fuccerham, which may mean "hām (“home”) of the fucker" or "hamm (“pasture”) of the fucker"; a John le Fucker in a record from 1278 may just be a variant of Fulcher; compare Fucher, Foker, etc. The earliest unambiguous use of the word in a clearly sexual context, in any stage of English, appears to be in court documents from Cheshire, England, which mention a man called Roger Fuckebythenavele (possibly tongue-in-cheek or directly suggestive of a depraved sexual act) on 8 December 1310. It was first listed in a dictionary in 1598. Scots fuk or fuck is attested slightly earlier, probably reinforcing the Northern Germanic/Scandinavian origin theory. From 1500 onward, the word has been in continual use, superseding jape and sard and largely displacing swive. See windfucker and fuckwind for more information. * A range of folk-etymological backronyms, such as fornication under consent of the king and for unlawful carnal knowledge, are all demonstrably false. * Verb sense 7 from related sense feck.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: fcuk,ffuck,fucck,fuckk,fukc,ufck
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for fuck
Misspelling Variants of "fuck"
Frequency rank: #396 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: