Study fucking English with George Carlin
Click to viewNow, then, the other word I wanted to remind you of was the word fuck, which of course is the champ of the all-time dirty words. When they’re always dirty, by God, fuck is right at the head of the pack. Fuck’s a good, strong word. It’s a good, strong word for its purpose, and it’s a word that a lot of people have trouble with.
Uh, it’s a… it’s an honest word, it’s a… it’s a forceful word, it has a lot of emotional baggage with it. When you hear the word fuck, you’re not just hearing the word, you’re hearing everything you ever heard about fucking. I mean, we have a lot of attitudes about fucking, some of them are rationale, and some of them aren’t.
Some of them have joy in them, some have guilt and fear and all sorts of things, and the word fuck carries with it a lot of emotional baggage. When they say fuck. You go what, oh, oh, good. Oh, I thought you meant do it right away. God, you know, it’s, uh, it’s just a word that, that, well, it’ll clear the room awfully quick in some households.
It’s a heavy, good, strong word. It’s a proud sounding word to me. Fuck, fuck, I am fuck. Who are you? Fuck of the Mountain. I just, uh, I just feel the word is getting a bad shake. The word has an image problem. The word fuck needs public relations help. It’s just a word, you know? That’s what you have to remember, it’s just a word, but it’s in such bad shape. Here’s a word that started out okay, it started out all right, nothing wrong with the word fuck originally.
I mean, there it was, you’re not a bad word, you’re not a bad word, you’ve just gotten in with bad company, people. That’s all, just the word was all it was. The word in the original old English, as best I can find, fuck only meant to hit, to smite, to… to perhaps hit with a stick, to fuck the tree, to fuck the rock, to fuck thee. That’s all, and pretty soon, that’s all, I’ll hit you with my dick, honey. Look at that, that’s all it was, just a little, I’ll knock a little fuck on you there.
That’s all it was, was a love tap when you get right down to it. That’s all fuck ever meant. All fuck ever meant was to make love, and to make life at the same time. That’s pretty magic. I mean, pretty noble things we think about, making love and making life, here was fuck hanging around with words like love and life. How did it get such a bad reputation?
We fucked it up. Yeah, well, we… we put the aggression back into the word. Fuck you, fuck you, you fuck. Fuck you, you fuck. Who the fuck do you think you’re fucking with, some kind of a fuckhead? Fuck you. Who the fuck do you think you’re fucking with, me? Don’t fuck with me, I’ll fuck over you. You fuck with me and you’ll get fucked, you fuck. Don’t fuck with me, I’m the fucker. Don’t fuck with the fucker.
God, it sounds like combat, man. It’s got an awful lot, there’s an awful lot of hostility in the way that word is used. There’s an awful lot of aggression going down in the name of fucking, imagine that. I’d just like to help a little, my feeling was, hey, here’s a word that, uh, maybe we could save, you know, just by paying a little close attention to it. The trouble is with all that aggression and all that violence, that we lose track of those two things, and people start talking about sex and violence like they’re one thing.
There’s some sort of an overlapping, there’s some sort of a gray area between sex and violence that some people really are confused about. There are people running around talking about sex and violence as if it’s one thing, as if it starts with an S and ends with a E. We’re gonna stamp it out of the comics, we’re gonna stamp it out of the Dixie Cup, we’re gonna stamp it out of homes. Sex and violence, hey, they are different, after all. And, some people even like them together, there are, true, people who do like a little violence with their sex. I’m not… I don’t care for that myself, I like my violence a little earlier in the afternoon, you know? Right around 2:00 o’clock a real good ass kicking and then everything’s all right.
But, uh, the word make love, not war, someone pointed it out finally, they made it very clear for us. Make love, not war. I wish I had thought of that phrase, you know? I really would have been very happy with myself if I had thought of that one. Man, I would have retired the same day. I would have left my car at the red light, man. I’d say that’s it, folks, I’m going to the beach. You got it, make love, not war. Well, I didn’t think of it, but I do have my own phrase; make fuck, not kill.
It’s not as graceful a phrase, but I’m not looking to retire, either. The whole idea of make fuck, not kill, is simply to switch the meanings of the words. I suggest that for one year we trade meanings on fuck and kill, just fuck for kill, and kill for fuck, that’s it. Don’t worry about what they really are, someone else will take care of real fucking and real killing. I’m just worried about what we call it… them. We call them fucking and killing. I say switch them around.
I think it would be an insight, I think we’d get a new slant on how we feel about these words if we just change fucking for killing for about a year, that’s all. Imagine it. Sure would be fun watching TV during that time, huh? Better get down off the horse, Sheriff, we’re fixing to fuck you now. Mad fucker still on the loose. Not anymore, he’s made his first big mistake, my friend, he fucked a cop today. That makes him a cop fucker. Pardon me, boys, my horse broke his leg, I’m gonna have to fuck him, I’ll be right back. Shamu, the fucker whale. And To Fuck a Mockingbird, hold gently by the wings. So all I’m trying to suggest is that fuck you can be a positive phrase. If you hear it from across the street… Fuck you. Okay.
You’re not a bad word, you’re not a bad word, you’ve just gotten in with bad company, people