cunt

English

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cunt

Wikipedia

Etymology

From Middle English cunte, queynt, queynte, from Old English *cunte, from Proto-Germanic *kuntǭ. Cognate with West Frisian kunte, Middle Dutch conte (Dutch kont (“butt”)), dialectal Swedish kunta, dialectal Danish kunte, and Icelandic kunta. A relationship to Latin cunnus has not been conclusively shown. Partridge suggests cuneus (“a wedge”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: kŭnt, IPA^(key): /kʌnt/,

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Audio (UK)

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• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ʌnt
• Hyphenation: cunt

Noun

cunt (countable and uncountable, plural cunts)

1. (vulgar, countable) The female genitalia, especially the vulva.
   • 1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter XII, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, authorized British edition, London: Martin Secker , published February 1932 (May 1932 printing), →OCLC:

     An' doesn't ter know? Cunt! It's thee down theer; an' what I get when I'm i'side thee, and what tha gets when I'm i'side thee; it's a' as it is, all on't.

   • 1983, Lawrence Durrell, Sebastian (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 1138:

     Ah! This power-house of human misery and ecstasy, the cunt!

   • 1962 [1959], William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press, page 80:

     Blind boys grope out of huge pies, deteriorated schizophrenics pop from a rubber cunt, boys with horrible skin diseases rise from a black pond (sluggish fish nibble yellow turds on the surface).

   • 1991, Ted Tally, The Silence of the Lambs (motion picture), spoken by Miggs (Stuart Rudin):

     I can smell your cunt.

   • 2004 June 23, Leo Benedictus, “A bit of hanky-panky”, in The Guardian:

     Then there is a drum roll, and I watch open-mouthed as she bends over and produces a string of red cloths from her femininity. "What better way to celebrate 10 years of Camberwell Arts Week than pulling 10 red handkerchiefs out of my cunt?" she asks.

   • 2014, Behemoth, Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel:

     I saw the Virgin's cunt spawning forth the snake

2. (vulgar, offensive, originally synecdochically, countable) An extremely unpleasant or objectionable person (in US, especially a woman; in Commonwealth more usually a man).
   • 1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 5:

     The taxi driver wisnae amused. He looked a right cunt. Maist ay them do. The stamp-peyin self-employed ur truly the lowest form ay vermin oan god’s earth.

   • 2007, Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole, Kai Struve, Shared History, Divided Memory, page 287:

     Vinokur pulled the trigger a second and third time. "You're lying, you Polish cunt!" he screamed.

   • 2009 November 12, Patrick Barkham, “Top Gear: Why We're Mad About the Boys”, in The Guardian:

     He rails against political correctness and health and safety regulations, and earlier this summer was accused of calling Gordon Brown "a cunt" in unbroadcast comments to his Top Gear audience, whom he has also referred to as "oafs".

3. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Commonwealth, countable) An objectionable object or item.

   Fix the car? I’ll sort the cunt out at the weekend.

4. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, UK, Commonwealth, countable, vulgar) An unpleasant or difficult experience or incident.
   • 1980, Stephen King, The Mist:

     The lines were up past the frozen food now; people had to cut through to get what they wanted and there was much excuse-me-ing and pardon-me-ing. “This is going to be a cunt,” Norton said morosely, and I frowned a little.

   • 2016 July 11, Rachel Braier, The Guardian:

     Certain situations just cry out for it – keys breaking in the lock, not being able to find the starting point in a roll of sticky-tape, running out of bin-bags. The kind of everyday annoyances that Alanis Morissette would define as irony are actually cunts as far as I’m concerned.

5. (vulgar, synecdochically, countable and uncountable) A woman, women, or bottom (i.e. submissive partner, not the top) as a source of potential or actual sexual gratification.

   I’m going to hit the clubs and see if I can get me some cunt.

6. (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, UK, Commonwealth, vulgar, positive, countable) (with words funny, good) A person (mostly between male friends); compare bastard.

   Yes, I do remember Dave; he was one funny cunt.

   Tom's a good cunt: he fixed my car and didn't even charge me for it!

   • 1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 41:

     —Happy New Year, ya wee cunt! Franco wrapped his arm around Stevie’s head.

Usage notes

• Writing in 1961, Partridge notes the term had been avoided "in written and polite spoken English" since the 15th century and had been considered obscene since around 1700. Partridge further notes the term's absence from the 1932 Universal Dictionary of English and the 1933 Shorter Oxford Dictionary, and he himself bowdlerizes it as c*nt.
• In many English-speaking countries, "cunt" is considered to be the most offensive swear word: a study by several British broadcasting organizations found that it was the most offensive word, with 96% classing it as severe; a similar study by New Zealand's Broadcasting Standards Authority found that it was the most offensive word there, offending 74% of New Zealanders.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:cunt.

Synonyms

• (female genitalia): See Thesaurus:vagina
• (unpleasant person): See Thesaurus:jerk and idiot

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

cunt (third-person singular simple present cunts, present participle cunting, simple past and past participle cunted)

1. To use the word "cunt".
   • 2007, Robert Minhinnick, Sea Holly, Seren Books:

     [...] and boy I can hear every word from behind my tree because that plot of hers is close to the road and she's fucking it and she's cunting it and you never heard a woman talking like that, not sober anyway[...]

   • 2016 September 27, Peter Stothard, The Senecans: Four Men and Margaret Thatcher, Abrams, →ISBN:

     Anyone whom he told to piss off was grateful not to have been cunted instead.

   • 2017 September 21, Chris Heath, quoting Robbie Williams, Reveal: Robbie Williams - As close as you can get to the man behind the Netflix Documentary, Bonnier Publishing Ltd., →ISBN:

     I wanted to provoke something in him so that he would hit me first, so I went over and cunted him off left , right and centre . He was a Scouser - I called him a Scouse cunt.

2. (offensive) To attack someone.
   • 2009 September 23, Peter Bradshaw, “The irony about Nick Love's Outlaw DVD commentary”, in The Guardian‎:

     Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry was indeed described as "fascist", notably by Pauline Kael, although there is no real evidence that Scorsese's Taxi Driver was "cunted" on first release – on the contrary, despite continuing misgivings about violence, that film was surely widely praised from the very first, getting the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

   • 2022 October 28, Gregory Ashe, A Fault against the Dead, Hodgkin and Blount, →ISBN:

     “I wanted him to leave me alone,” Baby said. “I wasn't actually going to, you know.”
     “Cunt him?” Theo said. Baby flinched.

3. (offensive) To ruin something; to fuck up.
   • 2015 September 17, Charles Higson, King Of The Ants, Hachette UK, →ISBN:

     ... 'We were going to. Duke gave you the ticket, it was all set. And then you cunted the whole plan, didn't you? You killed the bastard.'

   • 2018 July 10, Keith Gessen, A Terrible Country: A Novel, Penguin, →ISBN:

     “If I'd said things in Russia were cunted, that would mean bad.”

4. (offensive) To betray someone.
   • 2005, Darren Murphy, Tabloid Caligula, Oberon Books:

     JOE : You cunted me.
     ROBERT : Language . Not in here .
     JOE : You lied .

   • 2010 April 3, Richard Perilly, Villains, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 189:

     You cunted us, and I'm gonna make you pay, cos you shit on us Pete.

   • 2017 February 4, Alex Clark, “I'm no pussy when it comes to swearing”, in The Guardian‎:

     One of my favourite ever instances of its deployment was at a particularly troublesome roundabout, when a driver of my acquaintance uttered the deathless phrase: “Right: it’s cunt or be cunted.”

5. (offensive) To take something into one's vulva or vagina.
   • 1977, John Harris, Against the Day of the Dead:

     How she cunts his finger as if it were a close friend

   • 1998, Evan Dara, The Lost Scrapbook, University of Alabama Press, →ISBN, page 230:

     I am pushing towards him, against him, yearning to open up against his entire face, to cunt him entirely, to feel the full warm liquid merging

Adjective

cunt

1. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (LGBT) Amazing or very good.
   • 2022 December 29, PeachyPlumz (on reddit), in "Symmetra is a ‘gay icon’?", Reddit:

     Look at her like how can you not say cunt she's cunt

   • 2023 May 24, cutehammie (on reddit), in "Trans ally Azealia", r/popheadscirclejerk, Reddit:

     she's so CUNT ... like... how can i not say cunt???

References

• Eric Partridge (1961) A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English , 5th edition, New York: Macmillan

Anagrams

• Cnut, unct

Middle English

Noun

cunt

1. Alternative form of cunte

Old Dutch

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *kunþaz.

Adjective

cunt

1. known, familiar

Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Derived terms

• cundo

Descendants

• Middle Dutch: cont
  • Dutch: kond

Further reading

• “kunt”, in Oudnederlands Woordenboek, 2012