How Has The Word Cunt Changed Over Time

The word cunt is very old and has gone through many changes in its lifetime. It is a taboo and vulgar word with ancient origins. According to Tony Thorne in the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, “related words exist in other European languages (French con, Spanish cono) and it seems that, in the unwritten prehistoric Indo-European parent languages, cu or koo was a word base expressing “feminine” or “fecund” and associated notions.” (‘cunt’). At one point during Middle English (1066-1500CE) cunt stopped being vulgar, but sometime before the period was over it took back on its original meaning. The question is, why has this word changed meaning over time? The first recorded instance of cunt was during the Old English period, sometime between

The Old English phrase, “cuntan heale” is something to look at. The root of the first word cuntan is more similar to the Modern English version of the word used today. The only difference, besides the meaning, is the weak declension plural suffix –an. This was a common plural ending in Old English that eventually weakened over time to become the Middle English plural –en. It’s now known the phrase cuntan heale referred to an (unpleasant) wooded wedged valley, but it’s still unclear how cunt became its current

One can see as late as 1981 that letters were still being replaced with dashes and asterisk. For example, in the book Slang and Euphemism by Rickard A. Spears the entry reads, “1. Cunt (also c*nt, c**t, c***, ****, ----) a. the female genitals, specifically the vagina [said to be from Latin cunnus]” (‘cunt’). Meanwhile the last definition for cunt from Spears is, “A rotten fellow; a low, slimy man.”(‘cunt’). This shows that even though this word has taken on its original meaning, it has also taken on another meaning that is degrading and probably why it is the most vulgar word in the English