The Queen-Mother of Dirty Words

The movie: A Christmas Story
The scene: Ralphie helping his dad change a tire
The event: Ralphie spills the hub cap and the lug nuts go flying into the snow.

Ralphie: Oooh fuuudge!
Ralphie as Adult: Only I didn't say "Fudge." I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the "F-dash-dash-dash" word!
Mr. Parker: What did you say?
Ralphie: Uh, um...
Mr. Parker: That's... what I thought you said. Get in the car. Go on!
Ralphie as Adult: It was all over - I was dead. What would it be? The guillotine? Hanging? The chair? The rack? The Chinese water torture? Hmmph. Mere child's play compared to what surely awaited me.

Switch to Ralphie, a bar of soap in his mouth, being grilled by his mother:

Mother: Alright. Now, are you ready to tell me where you heard that word?
Ralphie as Adult: Now, I had heard that word at least ten times a day from my old man. He worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium; a master. But, I chickened out and said the first name that came to mind.
Ralphie: Schwartz! (Link)

Alas for poor Schwartz when his mother heard the news. And yet, in spite of the valiant efforts of mothers in English speaking countries around the world, it is a word which just won't go away.
Our previous entry, "No Frakkin'Way!", focused on current standards and usage of swear words. For a more in depth treatment of the etymology, history, and legal implication of the use of the F-word, the "gold-standard" of profanity, see Christopher Fairman's excellent article "Fuck."

In his abstract, Fairman, a faculty member at the Ohio State Moritz College of Law who waited until after he was awarded tenure to write this article, says

This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck. The intersection of the word fuck and the law is examined in four major areas: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education.

Make no mistake: this is a scholarly treatment of our most taboo word (although some linguists argue that it has slipped to third in the taboo word rankings).

Of particular interest to teachers--both high school and college-- is Fairman's review of legal precedent surrounding dismissal of teachers who have used the term in class. It is an area of some confusion, with some courts holding that the teacher's right to free speech does not apply in the classroom, while others have held that there are legitimate curricular reasons for the use of taboo words in a classroom.

Here are a few additional links:
"The Big One" -- from the Boston Globe
The F-Word -- Lexicon of current usage