Rather than tired cliches or graceless jokes, the F-Word contains page after page of actual, uncensored examples of the word in all its varied and robust use, from its first appearance in English in the fifteenth century. Every sense of every word containing F--k is examined in detail, with explanations and thousands of examples from many sources, including Robert Burns, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, E. E. Cummings, Jack Kerouac, soldiers' diaries, Playboy, and the Internet. The Introduction provides a revealing historical perspective on the use of this most notorious slang word. Whether you use the F-word to express outrage, exhaustion, confusion, victimization, cheating, temporary insanity, or simply fulsome lust, this book tells you everything you (n)ever wanted to know about this inventive underside of real English.