Fuck. An enlightening and entertaining article on the four-letter word.

Along with "cunt," "fuck" was excluded from dictionaries and almost all writing from the middle of the eighteenth century until 1960, when the Lady Chatterley trial was held, and both words were welcomed back from the Siberian gulags of condemned words. Not without difficulty, it has since made its way onto stage and screen. It must be said that an activity that is so popular and widespread has been poorly served by polite language.