The versatility of the word means it can be used as a verb (to fuck), noun (a fuck), adjective (fucking), adverb, or interjection. Fuck is also one of the few words in standard English commonly used as an infix, as in 'absofuckinglutely' or 'infuckingcredible', along with several other expletive infixes.
It is unclear whether the word had always been considered profane, and if not, when it first started to be considered profane. Some evidence indicates that in some English-speaking locales it was considered acceptable as late as the 17th century meaning "to strike" or "to penetrate"[1]. Other evidence indicates that it may have become vulgar as early as the 16th century in England. Other reputable sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary contend the true etymology is still uncertain but appears to point to an Anglo-Saxon origin that in later times spread to the British colonies and worldwide.
Early modern English fuck, fuk, answering to a Middle English type *fuken (weak verb) not found; ulterior etymology unknown. Synonymous German ficken cannot be shown to be related.
The first known occurrence, in code, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, "Flen, flyys, and freris"; that is, "Fleas, flies, and friars". The line that contains fuck reads "Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk". The Latin words "Non sunt in coeli, quia", mean "They [the friars] are not in heaven, because". The code "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and two vs were used for w. This yields "fvccant (a fake Latin form) vvivys of heli". The whole thus reads in translation: "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely (a city near Cambridge)." (Available, with minor adjustments to the translation, at The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition). The phrase was coded because of its meaning; it is uncertain to what extent the word itself was considered acceptable.
Other possible connections are to Latin futuere (hence the French foutre, the Catalan fotre, the Italian fottere, the Romanian fute, the vulgar peninsular Spanish follar and joder, and the Portuguese foder). However, there is considerable doubt and no clear lineage for these derivations. These roots, even if cognate, are not the original Indo-European word for to copulate; that root is likely *h3yebh-, ("h3" is the H3 laryngeal) which is attested in Sanskrit (yabhati) and the Slavic languages (Russian yebat`, Polish jeba?, Serbian ?????? (jebati)), among others: compare Greek "oiph�" (verb), and Greek "zephyros" (noun, ref. a Greek belief that the west wind caused pregnancy). However, Wayland Young (who agrees that these words are related) argues that they derive from the Indo-European * bhu- or *bhug-, believed to be the root of "to be", "to grow", and "to build". [Young, 1964]
Its first known use as a verb meaning to have sexual intercourse is in "Flen flyys" (see above) some time before 1500.
William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his feiris he wald haif fukkit:/ Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane."
Some time around 1600, before the term acquired its current meaning, "windfucker" was an acceptable name for the bird now known as the kestrel.
While Shakespeare never used the term explicitly, he hinted at it in comic scenes in several plays. The Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) contains focative case (see vocative case). In Henry V (IV.iv), Pistol threatens to firk (strike) a soldier, a euphemism for fuck.
Fuck did not appear in any widely-consulted dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1965. Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary (along with the word cunt) was in 1972.
In 1928, D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover gained notoriety for its frequent use of the words "fuck", "fucked", and "fucking".
The liberal usage of the word (and other vulgarisms) by certain artists (such as James Joyce, Henry Miller, and Lenny Bruce) has led to the banning of their works and criminal charges of obscenity.
After Norman Mailer's publishers convinced him to bowdlerize fuck as fug in his work The Naked and the Dead (1948), Tallulah Bankhead supposedly greeted him with the quip, "So you're the young man who can't spell fuck." (In fact, according to Mailer, the quip was devised by Bankhead's PR man. He and Bankhead never met until 1966 and did not discuss the word then.) The rock group The Fugs named themselves after the Mailer euphemism.
The first use of the word "fuck" on British television came on November 13, 1965 on the satirical show "BBC-3" (no relation to the present channel of that name). The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan declared, apropos of nothing, that "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word 'fuck' would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.".