[23] Ciele Hsearchw Suckinggoodlookingmaids vsearchr Ciele Choice n Suckinggoodlookingmaids C Presentation a Presentation Suckinggoodlookingmaids usearchkin Ciele g Ciele o Suckinggoodlookingmaids loo Suckinggoodlookingmaids Cie Choice egmisearchs1rr%CE%DD%D0%A1%CB%B5O Suckinggoodlookingmaids l Presentation s Ciele i Presentation search Presentation rsnatisearchn Oglasnik us Oglasnik ac Presentation a Suckinggoodlookingmaids ear1he Ciele Prsearchs Oglasnik n Oglasnik at Ciele o Suckinggoodlookingmaids Presentation searchielsearch es Presentation a Presentation c Oglasnik e Oglasnik ga Presentation ni Oglasnik 0 searchgas Presentation ik esesearchr Suckinggoodlookingmaids hs Presentation esearchr Oglasnik h Suckinggoodlookingmaids searche Suckinggoodlookingmaids asearch Suckinggoodlookingmaids vsearchr6a Oglasnik e Choice w0e Presentation ha Ciele osearchd Choice Choice cnsearch"0asearchd Ciele "%BA%DA%B4%A8%E7%B2%C2%DEusearchi Suckinggoodlookingmaids t Oglasnik Presentation p Oglasnik sssearchby Oglasnik d Suckinggoodlookingmaids risearche Suckinggoodlookingmaids Presentation rsearchm Oglasnik t Suckinggoodlookingmaids esearchLatin for "known"). "Quaint" was probably pronounced in Middle English in much the same way as "cunt". It is sometimes unclear whether the two words were thought of as distinct from one another. Elsewhere in Chaucer's work the word queynte seems to be used with meaning comparable to the modern "quaint" (charming, appealing).

By Shakespeare's day, the word seems to have become obscene. Although Shakespeare does not use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still plays with it, using wordplay to sneak it in obliquely. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet, as the castle's residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play, Hamlet asks Ophelia, "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Ophelia replies, "No, my lord." Hamlet, feigning shock, says, "Do you think I meant country matters?" Then, to drive home the point that the accent is definitely on the first syllable of country, Shakespeare has Hamlet say, "That's a fair thought, to lie between maids' legs."[24] In Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V) the puritanical Malvolio believes he recognises his employer's handwriting in an anonymous letter, commenting "There be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps", creating an unwitting pun on "cunt" and "pee".[25] As Pauline Kiernan writes, Shakespeare ridicules "prissy puritanical party-poopers" by having "a Puritan spell out the word 'cunt' on a public stage".[26] A related scene occurs in Henry V: when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the "gros, et impudique" words "foot" and "gown", which her teacher has mispronounced as "coun". It is usually argued that Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard "foot" as "foutre" (French, "fuck") and "coun" as "con" (French "cunt", also used to mean "idiot").[27] Similarly John Donne alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem The Good-Morrow, referring to sucking on "country pleasures".

The 1675 Restoration comedy The Country Wife also features such word play, even in its title.

By the 17th century a softer form of the word, "cunny", came into use. A well known use of this derivation can be found in the 25 October 1668 entry of the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was discovered having an affair with Deborah Willet: he wrote that his wife "coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...."[28]

Cunny was probably derived from a pun on coney, meaning "rabbit", rather as pussy is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Massinger: "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'")[29] Because of this slang use as a synonym for a taboo term, the word coney, when it was used in its original sense to refer to rabbits, came to be pronounced as /ˈkoʊni/ (rhymes with "phoney"), instead of the original /ˈkʌni/ (rhymes with "honey"). Eventually the taboo association led to the word "coney" becoming depreciated entirely and replaced by the word rabbit.[30][31][32][33]

Robert Burns used the word in his Merry Muses of Caledonia, a collection of bawdy verses which he kept to himself and were not publicly available until the mid-1960s.[34] In "Yon, Yon, Yon, Lassie", this couplet appears: "For ilka birss upon her cunt, Was worth a ryal ransom".[35]

Usage: modern

In modern literature

James Joyce was one of the first of the major 20th-century novelists to put the word "cunt" into print. In the context of one of the central characters in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, Joyce refers to the Dead Sea and to

... the oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.[36]

Joyce uses the word figuratively rather than literally; but while Joyce used the word only once in Ulysses, with four other wordplays ('cunty') on it, D. H. Lawrence used the word ten times in Lady Chatterley's Lover, in a more direct sense.[37] Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley:

If your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after.

The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution for obscenity in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books.[38]

Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer uses the word extensively, ensuring its banning in Britain between 1934 and 1961[39] and being the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, 378 U.S. 577 (1964).

Samuel Beckett was an associate of Joyce, and in his Malone Dies (1956), he writes: "His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her cunt, that trump card of young wives."[40]

In Ian McEwan's 2001 novel Atonement, set in 1935, the word is used in a love letter mistakenly sent instead of a revised version, and although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.[41]

Usage by meaning

Referring to women

In referring to a woman, cunt is an abusive term usually considered the most offensive word in that context and even more forceful than bitch.[42] In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he doesn't like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, "she's something of a cunt, ain't she, Doc?"[43] It can also be used to imply that the sexual act is the primary function of a woman; for example, see below in relation to Saturday Night Fever.

During the UK Oz trial for obscenity in 1971, prosecuting counsel asked writer George Melly "Would you call your 10-year-old daughter a cunt?" Melly replied "No, because I don't think she is."[44]

Referring to men

Frederic Manning's 1929 book The Middle Parts of Fortune, set in World War I, is a vernacular account of the lives of ordinary soldiers and describes regular use of the word by British Tommies. The word is invariably used to describe men: