Quoz

For many years, the filthiest word in English was “fuck.” Even the dauntless Partridge had to use “f*ck.” (In Norman Mailer’s 1948 war novel, “The Naked and the Dead,” the G.I.s use “fug.” In what may be an apocryphal story, Mae West, meeting Mailer at a party, said “Oh, you’re the guy who can’t spell ‘fuck’!”) According to Wajnryb, “fuck” has ceded first place to “cunt.

—The New Yorker, May 14th, 2012, p. 88