the worst four-letter word (not the Tetragrammaton)

N-word aside aside, I can think of no word with the power to offend so much and so universally as cunt. Most of my friends are pretty hard to startle with language, but cunt is one word I'm always reluctant to say, even when merely discussing it as an offensive word—even when typing it here.* In other English-speaking countries—maybe all of them, but certainly the United Kingdom—it's not nearly so taboo: people call each other cunt all the time. However, it's usually men calling each other cunt, whereas in the United States it's more frequently something a man would call a woman; that surely has some connection, probably causal, to its relative strength in this country.

Interestingly enough, it would appear that cunt is, or at least for a period of time in the later 20th century was, the preferred literary term for a woman's genitals. This wouldn't be all that interesting if it were only people like Roth or Miller using it, but Erica Jong used it, too: I'm reading Fear of Flying,** and there's an awful lot of "my cunt" in there. And Joyce used it in sexy (read crazy) letters to his wife,*** which is slightly different from his writing it in a novel because it suggests that Nora was on the same page, more or less. I've never known a contemporary woman for whom cunt was the preferred term (or let's say I've never known that I've known—maybe I should do another poll): I believe the most commonly used word that's neither too anatomical-sounding nor too infantile is pussy. But I don't know...maybe if you divorce it from all its political weight (impossible, quoth the postmodernist) cunt is actually a better word? None of this even takes into account the whole feminist reclamation of the word...except insofar as Jong counts as that—I guess she does?

Anyway, my own favorite use of the word**** is Chaucer's. Yes, the word goes back to the Middle English, and Chaucer uses it a number of times in The Canterbury Tales, as in his description of Nicholas's memorably forward courtship of Alisoun (before saying a word to her, "prively he caughte hire by the queynte"—gotta try that one in a bar sometime). But most impressive is the word's use in the Knight's Tale. As you may remember from English class, these stories tend to work on several levels because each of them is being told not [only] by Chaucer but [also] by one of his fictional characters, who tend to have their own agendas and biases; as a result, Chaucer's able to spin out webs, practically, of irony. (Chaucer was a spider.) The knight's a rather upright citizen ("a worthy man"), which gives Chaucer the opportunity to be particularly mischievous when writing his tale (and/or the opportunity to "scoop" Freud by suggesting 600 years ago that the truth will out, so to speak).

So in the Knight's Tale, Palamon and Arcite are going to war with each other (sort of) to win Emelye's hand in marriage, and although Emelye's parents have approved this set-up, Emelye herself—not too keen on the whole thing. So the night before the battle, Palamon goes to Venus' temple to pray that he win Emelye, Arcite goes to Mars' temple to pray that he win the battle (of course what happens is [SPOILER ALERT!!!] that Arcite wins the battle and then gets thrown from his horse and killed so both men get their wishes—fuckin' literal gods), and Emelye goes to Dyane's temple to pray to the goddess of chastity that she get to remain single. And so Dyane tells her to fuck off, but here's the amazing way this gets reported to us (keeping in mind that queynte meant not only cunt but also strange [think quaint] and extinguished):

But sodenly she saugh a sighte queynte,

For right anon oon of the fyres queynte,

And quyked agayn, and after that anon

That oother fyr was queynt and al agon;

And as it queynte it made a whistelynge...

So, like...the knight definitely wouldn't be making a bunch of lady-part jokes, but Chaucer sure would. In a scene in which a beautiful young woman is asking to be granted chastity, and denied? Queynte, queynte, queynt, queynte...! Oh, Geoffrey—you wacky spider.

* By comparison, evidently I was slow to the point of immobility when it came to the "N-word."

** On John Updike's suggestion, as reprinted in a recent New Yorker: he said that Jong continued the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye and Portnoy's Complaint, two books I like quite a lot. Two thirds of the way into the novel, I'm wondering whether Updike, often accused of sexism or misogyny, was maybe just being condescending, or if he had something to prove: Jong's funny and clearly smart, but the novel is hardly great literature. Or maybe Updike looked down on Salinger and Roth and was secretly damning with faint praise?

*** Worth reading less for the cunt than for highlights such as, "my naughty wriggling little frigger, my sweet dirty little farter."

**** Yes, we're going to close with pure unapologetic reveling in the word. Did I mention I'm 12 years old?