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Fornicating Under Consent of King

literaryreview.co.uk

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Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#31

Post by radarsat1 »

jdavis703 wrote: post #9
thaumasiotes wrote: post #2

> the word whose usage is considered so offensive that it has caused the decline of its unfortunate near-homophone ‘niggardly’ That's not exactly a unique phenomenon. For example, it's how "rabbit" replaced "coney".

In Spanish conejo (rhymes with coney) is rabbit. Interesting how we’re still slowly loosing cognates from our shared latin roots. Edit: I may be assuming an incorrect pronunciation of coney. Even as a native speaker English sucks.

Even in Dutch they use the word konijn, I actually had no idea that "coney" was an English cognate for that word until reading this thread, I love learning these associations as making connections like this really helps in learning new languages.

As an aside, Spain itself was named after rabbits, which I find hilarious: http://www.ctspanish.com/rabbits.htm

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#32

Post by kenneth »

dhosek wrote: post #10
mbg721 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing the more likely etymology, it's a little awkward when I see the billboards for a dentist in my area named Dr. Ficker.

Speaking of misread signs, there's a Chinese restaurant on San Vicente in Los Angeles named Hunan Taste. More than one person has mistaken that first n for an m.

Hunan is a province of China known for delicious and incredibly spicy food.

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#33

Post by andi999 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #15
srean wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help out a non English speaker if you can. What vulgar associations ? EDIT: Thanks, all who responded. I wouldn't have made the connection although I am quite familiar with the 'vulgar' word in question. The phonetic similarity sounds farfetched to me, one ends with a hard consonant, the other with a vowel sound.

Sounds like "cunny" = "cunt". Responding to your edit: > EDIT: Thanks, all who responded. I wouldn't have made the connection although I am quite familiar with the 'vulgar' word in question. The phonetic similarity sounds farfetched to me, one ends with a hard consonant, the other with a vowel sound. It's not that "coney" sounds like "cunt". It doesn't. It's that it sounds like "cunny", which is a diminutive form of…

I thought it is the adjective form, but diminutive sounds also ok.

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#34

Post by tuukkah »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #27
tuukkah wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conejo (which has the long a sound in the second syllable). The Spanish word is pronounced more like "koh-neh-hoh" (or [ko'neho] in IPA), no "long a" ([ei] in IPA) there. The English "long vowels" (diphthongs really: a combination of two vowel sounds) would be written with two letters in Spanish (and IPA).

> The English "long vowels" (diphthongs really: a combination of two vowel sounds) would be written with two letters in Spanish (and IPA). Three out of five are diphthongs. "Long E" is /i/. "Long u" is /u/.

Good clarification. Depending on the variant of English, "long e", "long u" and "long a" may or may not sound like diphthongs. They can be analysed as /ij/ and /uw/. Wikipedia puts them under "potential diphthongs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Vowels

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#35

Post by pjc50 »

area51org wrote: post #3

It's amazing how many people still fall for the 'fuck-as-acronym' myths. I've literally argued with people convinced that FUCK stands for Fornication Under Consent of the King, or (as Van Halen apparently believed) For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. No, none of the above. Nope.

I've heard that one for "naff", allegedly from "not available for f--", which is probably bogus but the etymology is very unclear: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1648,0...

The suggestion that it comes from Polari is far more interesting, as Polari was incorporated into the great British tradition of using innuendo to get past unimaginative censoriousness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_and_Sandy

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#36

Post by phreeza »

andi999 wrote: post #33
thaumasiotes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like "cunny" = "cunt". Responding to your edit: > EDIT: Thanks, all who responded. I wouldn't have made the connection although I am quite familiar with the 'vulgar' word in question. The phonetic similarity sounds farfetched to me, one ends with a hard consonant, the other with a vowel sound. It's not that "coney" sounds like "cunt". It doesn't. It's that it sounds like "cunny", which is a diminutive form of…

I thought it is the adjective form, but diminutive sounds also ok.

The adjective non-diminutive would retain the t

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#37

Post by tragomaskhalos »

area51org wrote: post #3

It's amazing how many people still fall for the 'fuck-as-acronym' myths. I've literally argued with people convinced that FUCK stands for Fornication Under Consent of the King, or (as Van Halen apparently believed) For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. No, none of the above. Nope.

Folk etymologies based on acronyms seem to hold a peculiar power over people's imaginations, irrespective of how obviously false they are. I remember as a lad being told that 'news' was so called because it came from the north, east, west and south :eyeroll:

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#38

Post by twic »

azalemeth wrote: post #25

> Perhaps because this is a book about language’s colloquial use, the Americanisms within seem more noticeable than in other tomes originating on the opposite side of the Atlantic. For example, when discussing the past tense of the verb so elegantly deployed in the lavatories at Trisha’s, McWhorter asserts that the form of the verb that rhymes with ‘bat’ seems affected or ‘arch’. In this country we might associate ‘a…

I struggle to define this use of 'arch'; i would say it applies to speech or writing which says something indirectly, in a clever or playful way. Wiktionary says "knowing, clever, mischievous", and has some quotations [1].

I agree with Butler-Gallie here (not words i thought i would ever write) that there is nothing particularly arch about "shat".

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arch#Etymology_2

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#39

Post by rusk »

paleotrope wrote: post #5
thaumasiotes wrote: post #2

> the word whose usage is considered so offensive that it has caused the decline of its unfortunate near-homophone ‘niggardly’ That's not exactly a unique phenomenon. For example, it's how "rabbit" replaced "coney".

Which is funny because coney used to be pronounced more like cunny and was deliberately pronounced coney to get away from the vulgar associations.

Interesting maybe that Coinín (sp?) is rabbit in modern Irish/Gaeilge and is pronounced in the former manner. Presumably it has some indo European roots, that didn’t spread into common English usage.

Re: Fornicating Under Consent of King

#40

Post by rusk »

mbg721 wrote: post #16
srean wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help out a non English speaker if you can. What vulgar associations ? EDIT: Thanks, all who responded. I wouldn't have made the connection although I am quite familiar with the 'vulgar' word in question. The phonetic similarity sounds farfetched to me, one ends with a hard consonant, the other with a vowel sound.

Female genitalia, along the lines of Shakespeare's "Country matters".

Once I realised this, Blur’s ”Country House” took on a whole new meaning …
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