Fuckin Abbot

March 1993 NOTES AND QUERIES 29 

A third explanation would require geances to 

have been intended as a bumpkin's error which 

perhaps had a source in the actual popular 

speech of the period. Merger of the reflexes of 

ME /a:/ and ME /e:/ in vulgar speech made jane 

'Genoese small coin' homophonous with jean 

'(Genoese) twilled cotton cloth', and if their 

common semantic association with Genoese 

origin was perceptible, they could thenceforth 

have been regarded as the same word. Since 

jean had a variant with stem ending in [s], that 

variant might in popular usage have been 

extended to jane to give a singular /d3e:ns/ out 

of which a plural geances was created. 

Whichever may be the correct explanation of 

the origin of the form geances, there seems to be 

quite sufficient evidence in the records of forms 

descended from med. Lat. Janua with and 

without -s in the stem and with (the reflexes of) 

ME /a:/ or /e:/ as stressed vowel to establish 

between geance and jane a credible formal 

association. And as scrutiny of the exchange 

between Hilts and Tub has shown, geances as 

'(worthless) small Genoese coins' not only fits 

the context admirably, but supplies a motivation 

for Tub's offer of gold crowns as an incentive to 

his servant. 

DEREK BRITTON 

University of Edinburgh 

A 'DAMNED F—IN ABBOT' IN 1528: THE 

EARLIEST ENGLISH EXAMPLE OF A 

FOUR-LETTER WORD 

MS BRASENOSE COLLEGE, Oxford VII is a 

fifteenth-century manuscript of which the first 

item, fos 1-88, is Cicero's De Officiis.' It is 

written in double columns, and in the tail margin 

of fo. 6 2\ at the foot of the left-hand column, are 

the words: 

false are the works wich this Abbot writ in the 

abbie of Osney alias Godstow 1528 

The comment is repeated in the same hand, with 

minor variations of wording and spelling (but 

without the date), in the left-hand margins of fos 

' For a description see H. O. Coxe. Cmalogus Codicum 

MSS. qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus Hodie Adservantur 

(Oxford, 1852), ii. The text of De Officiis begins 

imperfectly at the end of l.iii. 10. 

7 l v ('false are the workes wich this Abbot writ in 

Osney alias Godstow') and 78" ('false are the 

wors jsic] of this Abbot at Osney alias godstou'). 

Also in the tail margin of fo. 62", at the foot of the 

right-hand column, and in the same hand as the 

other marginalium, are the words: 

O d fuckin Abbot 

Presumably 'd' (though with no mark of suspension) 

is short for an English word, and damned 

is an obvious possibility. Its use as an intensive is 

not recorded in MED, and OED 2 s.v. damned, 

ppl. a., 4, first records the use as a profane 

intensive in Shakespeare's The Taming of the 

Shrew (1596) and the adv. profane use in 1757, 

with the clipped form damn, a. and adv., from 

1775 (the profane intensive usage of damnable 

and damnably is likewise unknown to MED 

and is not recorded by OED 2 before the last 

decade of the sixteenth century). OED 2 's comment 

in the headnote to damned, ppl. a., 4 (and 

cf. the comment s.v. damn, v. 5), that it is 'Now 

usually printed "d—d"' is a verbatim reprint 

from the original (1897) volume III of OED, 

and the reprehensible failure to revise this 

clearly outdated comment sits ill with the 

second edition's candour in 1989 in the inclusion 

of the 'four-letter word' which is the subject 

of this article (first listed by OED in Volume I of 

its Supplement, 1972), and thus it is especially 

odd that OED 1 should not observe that it is 

quite common still for this last word to be 

printed with dashes or asterisks for omitted 

letters. 

However, there is no doubt that fuckin is 

OED 2 fuck, v., but, as will be seen when the 

manuscript context is discussed, it cannot be 

certainly established whether it is the ppl. adj. = 

literally 'copulating' or whether it is used as a 

mere intensive. Neither the verb nor any of its 

derivatives is in MED, and Thomas W. Ross, 

who prints the English taboo words which are 

found glossing their Latin equivalents in three 

pedagogical manuscripts of the late fifteenth 

century (British Library MSS Additional 

37075, Harley 1277, and Royal 17.C.XVII) 

found no examples; he observes that though the 

scribes: 

felt free enough to gloss Latin names for parts 

of the body and for excretion, [they] felt some 

Downloaded from 

http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ 

at Bodleian Library on January 19, 2013

30 NOTES AND QUERIES March 1993 

delicacy about certain words that pertain to 

lechery and fornication. 2 

However, in that the manuscripts cited are 

pedagogic, and thus could have come into a 

schoolboy's hands (MS Add. 37075 has a 

schoolboy's personal notes added: see Thomson, 

op. cit., n. 2 232), an additional, protective 

inhibition may have been at work. OED 1 first 

records the verb in English (as distinct from 

Scots) in John Florio's Italian-English dictionary, 

A Worlde of Wordes (London, 1598), 

where along with 'to iape, to sard, to swiue, to 

occupy' it glosses 'Fottere, fotto, fottei, fottuto'; 

the Brasenose manuscript's example thus antedates 

Florio by seventy years. Under sense 3 of 

the verb OED 1 first records the ppl. a. and adv. 

used as 'a mere intensive' in J. S. Farmer and 

W. E. Henley, Slang and Us Analogues Past and 

Present ([London], 1893), iii.81 who note, with 

no examples: 

Adj. (common). A qualification of extreme 

contumely. 

Adv. (common). I. Intensitive and expletive; a 

more violent form of BLOODY. 

If the example in the Brasenose manuscript is 

used as a mere intensive it thus antedates 

Farmer and Henley by 365 years (for a Scots, 

literal example of the ppl. a., c. 1570, see below). 

The use of taboo words and swear words 

varies, apart from a person's own disposition, 

according to a complex of factors such as class, 

sex, age, occupation, and whether the occasion 

is solitary (alone or under the breath) or in some 

sense social; under 'social' we can distinguish 

the communicative occasion as written (and 

after the invention of printing we can further 

categorize print and manuscript) or spoken. We 

should also consider what may be termed the 

genre of the communication: if written, whether, 

say, satire or philosophical argument, and if 

spoken, consider both the company (e.g. 

whether women or children are present) and the 

nature of the occasion (as e.g. between a speech 

at a memorial service and at a sports club 

1 T. W. Ross, 'Taboo-Words in Fifteenth-Century 

English', in R. F. Yeager (ed.), Fifteenth-Century Studies: 

Recent Essays (Hamden, Conn., 1984), 137-60,at 140.Fora 

detailed account of Ross's principal manuscript source, 

British Library MS Add. 37075, see D.Thomson, A 

Descriptive Catalogue of Middle English Grammatical Texts 

(New York and London, 1979), 219-32. 

dinner). In all these matters there is a diachronic 

dimension whereby we note that these distinctions 

may vary in significance between different 

periods. Only if the fullest context is established 

can the import of the occurrence of a particular 

taboo or swear word be appreciated. 3 

Fortunately, we can establish much of the 

context which led to the marginalium on fo. 62* 

of the Brasenose manuscript in 1528. The 

Abbot of the Augustinian house at Osney, 

Oxford, at that time was John Burton, first a 

Bachelor and then a Doctor of Canon Law. 4 He 

had previously been Prior of St Frideswide, 

Oxford, from 1513-24. 5 At the Visitation of the 

Priory by William Atwater, bishop of Lincoln, 

on 5 May 1520 a number of charges were 

preferred against him; A. Hamilton Thompson 

summarizes them thus: 

The prior himself was no worse than other 

priors, and the charges preferred against him 

were of the usual kind, engrossment of the 

revenues of all offices, failure to render 

accounts in public, with the suspicion of 

collusion with the auditor, sale of wood and 

leases of churches and manors on his own 

responsibility, and the general accusation that 

3 The best study of the topic is G. Hughes, Swearing: A 

Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in 

English (Oxford, and Cambridge, Mass., 1991), which covers 

Old English to the present day. Unmentioned by Hughes but 

worth consulting is M. Ljung, 'Two American Blasphemes 

[the swear word and the pres. ppt. of the verb fuck\\ in J. Allwood 

and M. Ljung (eds), Alvar: A Linguistically Varied 

Assortment of Readings: Studies Presented to Alvar Ellegdrd 

on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, Stockholm Papers in 

English Language and Literature, Publication 1 (September 

1980), 116-29; Ljung's suggestion that the final syllable in the 

swearword was originally adenominal suffix -en of much the 

same kind' (118) as is found in earthen, wooden, golden, etc., 

and that it has been re-spelled -ing on a mistaken analogy with 

the pres. ppt. does not persuade; see also Ljung's 'Ouch!' in 

S. Backman and G. Kjellmer (eds), Papers on Language and 

Literature Presented to Alvar Ellegdrd and Erik Frykman, 

Gothenburg Studies in English 60(1985), 274-9. There is an 

excellent discussion of the comparative linguistic material in 

OF fabliaux in C. Muscatine, The Old French Fabliaux (New 

Haven and London, 1986), 105-51. See also the further 

references s.v. n. 14 below. 

4 See A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University 

of Oxford A.D. 1501 to 1540 (Oxford, 1974), s.v. 

Burton, John. 

5 H. E. Salter, 'The Religious Houses of Oxfordshire', 

Victoria County History of Oxfordshire (London, 1907), 

ii.97-101, gives a history of the Priory of St Frideswide; for 

the history of Osney Abbey see pp. 90-3, and for that of the 

nunnery at Godstow see pp. 71-5. 





he was enriching himself at the expense of the 

monastery. He denied the sales and leases; 

and, when two definite cases were asserted in 

which his brother was lessee, he answered 

that he had let nothing that was not customary. 

But a note in the margin states that the 

custom was quite recent. To the charge that he 

had sold all the bestial of the house except a 

few sheep his answer was that he had stock 

and was intending to add to it. He admitted 

that he had cut up the cloths of say that used to 

hang round the choir and had been given for 

that purpose, and used them for hangings in 

his lodging; but he said that they were old and 

worn and unfit for the church, and more 

suitable for their present use. He denied, 

however, that he had broken up a silver basin 

belonging to the church and made it into 

spoons for his lodging, and that he had misapplied 

two mazers and two girdles which 

used to be kept in the chapter-house, and had 

given one of the girdles to his sister, who wore 

it. The convent complained that he ordered 

bad food for their daily meals, bullocks' 

shoulders, sheep's-necks and such like. The 

house was no doubt in an uncomfortable 

state, but the evidence does not suggest 

imminent need of dissolution. 6 

Pace Hamilton Thompson, this is quite a catalogue, 

especially when seen in the context of 

another charge which is not included in the 

summary. It was alleged that Burton was excessively 

aloof and harsh towards the brethren, 

and that he upbraided and disparaged them 

beyond measure for the most trivial offences: 

Dominus prior est nimis elatus et seuerus in 

fratres suos et pro minima offensa increpat et 

vilipendit eos vltra modum. 7 

One begins to see here the kind of man who 

arouses antagonism and resentment. St Frideswide's 

was dissolved in 1524 when Wolsey 

wanted the site and its revenues for the foundation 

of his Cardinal College; Burton's election as 

Abbot of Osney (an office he held until his death 

in 1537) in the same year was made possible by 

the resignation of its Abbot, William Barton, 

* A. Hamilton Thompson, Visitations in the Diocese of 

Lincoln 1517-1531: i, Publications of the Lincoln Record 

Society [LRS\ xwciii (1936), p. Ixxix. 

7 A. Hamilton Thompson, Visitations...: Hi, LRS, xxxvii 

(1940), 49. 

who had held the office since 1504/5, and 

Hamilton Thompson conjectures that 'Barton's 

resignation may have been forced'. 8 To our 

picture of a man of over-harsh disposition may 

now be added a possibly imposed appointment, 

and conceivably involving the enforced resignation 

of a much loved Abbot of some twenty 

years' standing. Even in the last year of his life 

Burton continued to arouse hostility when a 

John Parkyns in January 1537 wrote to Cromwell 

concerning the 'ij vayn gloryus abbottes of 

Osseny and Evynsam [Eynsham]', accusing 

them of making unlawful assembly and showing 

disrespect to the King's commission; it is fair to 

add that the first of these documents has an 

endorsement describing Parkyns as 'A fole of 

Oxford or thereaboutes'. 9 

The marginalium at the foot of the left-hand 

column of fo. 62" alludes to two specific criticisms 

when it describes Burton as the author of 

'false ... works' which he wrote at 'Osney alias 

Godstow'. I have found no trace of any writings 

by Burton (there is nothing in STC), and their 

content is a matter for conjecture. However, the 

words 'alias Godstow' must carry the implication 

that the close relations, indicated by alias, 

between the Augustinian abbey of Osney and 

the house of Benedictine nuns at Godstow, a few 

miles to the north-west of Oxford, were sexual 

in nature. Yet there are no records of any sexual 

irregularities at the time (15 2 8) at either institution: 

the Visitations of Godstow in 1517 and 

1520, prior to Burton's abbotship of Osney 

(1524-1537), make no mention of any, 10 and in 

1535 John Tregonwell reported to Cromwell: 

After leaving Oxford I went to Godstowe, 

where I found all things well, both the abbess 

and the convent, except that one sister, 13 or 

14 years ago, then being of a Northern house, 

had a child, and was sent to Godstowe for 

correction by the bishop of Lincoln, and has 

ever since lived virtuously.'' 

The content of the manuscript on the three 

folios containing the marginalia throws no 

• ibid., n. 7,40 n. 4. 

' Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign 

of Henry VIII, xii Pan i (1890), 43 no. 79; for other documents 

in Parkyns's campaign see 60 no. 127; 107-8 no. 211; 

123 no. 261/1; 125-6 no. 264. 

10 

A. Hamilton Thompson, Visitations...: ii, LRS, xxxv 

(1938), 152-4. 

11 

Letters and Papers..., ix (1886), 148 no. 457. 





further light: the text on fo. 62" runs from 

III.iv.17 ('tarn que id honestum ...') of De 

Officiis to III.iv.19 ('... Uicit ergo vtilitas'), and 

consists of a discussion of the alleged conflict 

between expediency (utilitas) and morality 

(honestas); on fo. 71 v the marginalium is against 

the sentence in III.xiii.56 'Hec est ilia, que 

uidentur \sic] vtilium fieri cum honestis sepe 

dissencio'; and on fo. 78 V the marginalium is 

against the words in III.xxii.86 '[fabri]cij ei que 

pollicitus est, si premium sibi proposuisset, se, 

vt clam venisset, sic clam in pirrhi castra rediturum', 

part of the story of Fabricius and the 

deserter in which Fabricius refused to employ a 

deserter to assassinate his enemy Pyrrhus, 

preferring victory and glory by valour and the 

sword to victory by crime and a shameful deed: a 

decision on grounds of both morality and 

expediency. Whilst it is no doubt profitable for 

an abbot to reflect on these issues, other parts of 

De Officiis would have provided a more appropriate 

context for the marginalia: e.g. 

l.xxviii.lOlff. (on the need to subordinate 

sensual appetites to reason) or II.x.37 (on how 

sensual pleasure turns away the hearts of most 

people from virtue). 

On the assumption that the charge of sexual 

immorality against Burton (and perhaps more 

widely the abbey of Osney) and the nuns of 

Godstow was factually without foundation, it is 

probably to be explained by reference to a 

commonplace of literary satire against monks 

and nuns. 12 The implication of the marginal 

reference to 'Osney alias Godstow' is that 

relations between the two houses were as 

licentious as in the Middle English The Land of 

Cokaygne those between the 'wel fair abbei / Of 

white monkes and of grei' (lines 51-2) and the 

nearby 'gret fair nunnerie' (line 148). u The 

author of the marginalium made the charge 

either believing it to be true, or, knowing it to be 

false, using the conventionality of a satiric topos 

to lend credibility. 

12 For references to the literary treatment of lechery in 

monks and nuns see J. Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates 

Satire (Cambridge, 1973), 25 (and 222 n. 32), and 129-31 

(and 270 n. II); see also E. Power, Medieval English 

Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge. 1922), Note J. 'The 

Theme of the Nun in Love in Medieval Popular Literature'. 

622-6 (and cf. also 499-562). 

'•' Text in J. A. W. Bennett and G. V. Smithers (eds). Early 

Middle English Verse and rrose, 2nd cdn (Oxford. 1968). 

I 36-44. 

The satiric background is also relevant to a 

linguistic consideration of the use of fuckin at 

the foot of the right-hand column of fo. 62*. Up 

to 1598, the date of 0ED 2 's earliest English 

instance in Florio's dictionary (see above), all 

the recorded examples of the verb and its 

derivatives are in contexts which are in some 

sense satiric or at least comic. These early 

examples are listed by OED 2 and, a fuller 

number, in DOST (which provides dates and 

bibliographical references but no quotations). 

Without the text and without notes on context, 

genre, speaker, etc., the significance of the 

examples cannot be assessed, and so I give 

below a full inventory of the recorded instances 

before 1598: 

Verb: 

1. '3it be his feiris [behaviour] he wald haif 

fukkit': J. Kinsley (ed.), The Poems of William 

Dunbar (Oxford, 1979), no. 13 ['In Secreit 

Place'], 40, line 13. There is no warrant for 

OED 2 's date of ante 1503, and the poem can 

only be dated as before Dunbar's death in c. 

1513. The subject of the vb. is described (line 

10) as 'townysche ['"towny", bourgeois, 

uncourtly' according to Kinsley; elsewhere the 

word is opposed to uplandish or rustic; for 

Lydgate's association of the word with gawping 

simplicity see OED 1 s.v. townish, a. 1], peirt 

['forward, saucy'] and gukkit ['foolish, silly']', 

and is sexually inexperienced (lines 16-17). In 

an excellent discussion of the poem, P. Bawcutt, 

Dunbar the Makar (Oxford, 1992), is unwilling 

to class it as a satire, finding its attitude to the 

exuberant bawdy 'amused rather than contemptuous' 

(302). 

2. 'Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour': 

D. Hamer(ed.), The Works of Sir David Lindsay 

of the Mount 1490-1555: i, Scottish Text Society 

[STS] 3rd series 1 (1931), 'The Answer Quhilk 

Schir Dauid Lindesay Maid to the Kingis 

Flyting', 103, line 49; composed 71536. 

3. 'Bischopis ar blist, howbeit that we be wareit 

[cursed] / For thay may fuck thair fill and nocht 

be mareit': D. Hamer (ed.), The Works of Sir 

David Lindsay ...: ii, STS 3rd ser. 2 (1931), 

'Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis', 146, lines 

1362-3. First performed 1540, the quotation is 

from the version of 1552, preserved in the 

Bannatyne MS of 1568. Spoken by a 'Sowttare' 

or cobbler. 





Participial Adjective 

1. 'Evin as Meffan [Paul Methven, minister of 

the Reformed Church at Jedburgh, who was 

deposed towards the end of 1562 for adultery 

with his servant-girl: see STS 28 (1892-3), 142- 

3, and DNB s.v. Methuen, Paul], his scuill 

maistre, J?ai se, schew him \>e way, / Quha nef/ 

wy' ojj'manis wyffe nor maid, bot wy 1 his awin 

las lay: /Than lat ws sing, O fukand flok! 3o r deid 

is not lyk 30' say': J. Cranstoun (ed.), Satirical 

Poems of the Time of the Reformation: i, STS 20 

(1889-90), no. xxix, 'A Lewd Ballet', 202, lines 

28-30. The MS is dated December 1571, and 

this poem was probably composed after 

4 October 1570 (see STS 28,143, line 34 n.). It 

is an attack on religious topsy-turvydom and 

sexual hypocrisy. 

Verbal Noun 

1. '3our courtly fukking garis me fling': W. Tod 

Ritchie (ed.), The Bannatyne Manuscript: Hi, 

STS 2nd ser. 23 (1928), no. ccvi [no title: inc. in 

somer quhen flo'is will smell'], 27, line 48. MS 

dated 1568. Unusually, the speaker is female, 

addressing a male seducer; the tone is not so 

much satirical as humorously tolerant of 

undoubted absurdity (cf. Dunbar's in Secreit 

Place' above). 

2. 'Thir foure [sc. gucking ('fooling'), Brasing 

('embracing'), graping ('groping'), and plucking 

('grabbing')], the suth to sane, / Enforsis thame 

[women] to fucking': J. Cranstoun (ed.), The 

Poems of Alexander Scott, STS 36 (1896), no. 

iv, 'Ane Ballat maid to the Derisioun and Scorne 

of wantoun Wemen', 21, lines 54-5. MS dated 

1568; Scott lived c. 1525-c. 1583. 

3."... for quha wald not lauche q" his hart grew 

soir, / To see forett \>t holy frere his fukking so 

deploire?': from 'A Lewd Ballet': see above s.v. 

Participial Adjective, 202, lines 24-5. 

In all the examples cited the meaning is literal 

('copulate, copulating'); all instances occur in 

verse; and all are in satiric or comic contexts. It is 

clear that in satire and comedy a lower register 

was regarded as appropriate to the genre - 

shocking, but less so than in other contexts; 

indeed, in exposing the reality of illicit sexual 

acts conducted beneath the faus semblant of 

holiness and respectability the verb's taboo 

bluntness had a particular power and justification: 

the time for 'glosing', moral and linguistic, 

is over. In one instance only (Verbal Noun, 

no. 1) is the speaker female, and this is in accord 

with the view found from the Middle Ages 

onwards that women do (or should) avoid taboo 

vocabulary; 14 and in the one case (Verbal Noun, 

no. 2) where the word is applied to the sexual 

activity of women it is to women whose morals 

are gross: the word is linguistically and rhetorically 

decorous and congruent with the subject 

matter. In three cases (Verb, no. 3; the Participial 

Adjective; and Verbal Noun, no. 3) the 

word is used in relation to the sexual hypocrisy 

of ecclesiastics. It is also to be observed that all 

seven instances before 1598 recorded by OED 1 

and DOST are Scottish. This cannot be 

explained by the satiric context since the English, 

from at least The Owl and the Nightingale 

onwards, also had a tradition of invective and 

flyting; 15 1 know of no evidence that use of the 

word in the sixteenth century, any more than 

now, was geographically conditioned (the 

Brasenose MS is a piece of evidence against 

this), and the reason for this comparative wealth 

of Scottish examples remains obscure. 

The Brasenose College MS's marginalium in 

1528 is not only the earliest English example, 

but it is earlier than all but Dunbar [ante c. 

1513) of the Scottish ones. It is also the first 

recorded instance in prose in either language. Its 

use in an anti-clerical context can be paralleled 

in three of the seven Scottish quotations cited. 

One cannot be certain of the meaning in the 

marginalium, literal or merely intensive, but the 

clear innuendo of 'alias Godstow' indicates a 

probability that it is literal: 'O damned copulating 

Abbot'. 

The author of the marginalia was self-evidently 

literate, and possession (not necessarily 

ownership) of a manuscript consisting entirely 

of items in Latin might suggest, though without 

certainty, that the possessor could read Latin; 

14 On this topic see G.Hughes, op. cit., n. 3, 209-12; 

J.Coates, Women, Men and Language (London and New 

York, 1986), 19-22 (includes historical evidence), 108-9, 

131; E. Burness, Female Language in |Dunbar's| The Trelis 

of the Tua Mariii Wemen and the Wedo', in D. Strauss and 

H. W. Drescher (eds), Scottish Language and Literature, 

Medieval and Renaissance (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, and 

New York, 1986), 359-68; J. Mann, Apologies to Women 

(Cambridge, etc., 1991), 3ff. For the comparative Old French 

material see also Muscatine, op. cit., n. 3, Index s.v. Language, 

obscene: use by women'. 

" See P. Bawcutt. Dunbar the Makar (Oxford. 1992), 

236-8. 





use of the word 'alias' is a further, small, pointer 

in this direction. If the author could read Latin, 

that, and the gender-related history of the taboo 

word, one which was used predominantly by 

men of men, would indicate that the writer of the 

marginalia was male. Since we do not know if the 

manuscript was owned by, or only on loan to, 

the word's writer we cannot determine whether 

the occasion of use of the taboo word was 

wholly private or, in some sense, social: whether 

the marginalium reflected a private exasperation, 

never intended for other eyes, over an 

Abbot who had a history of arousing resentment, 

or whether, if the manuscript was only on 

loan, the writer expected or hoped that his 

comments would be read by others on its return. 

We can properly suppose that a handwritten 

comment, not intended for later printed publication, 

would confer a particular freedom of 

expression, and, on the basis of Scottish usage in 

the sixteenth century, it could be inferred that in 

England, too, the use of this taboo word in 

satiric attacks on ecclesiastics had a generic 

acceptability which conferred a further licence 

for its employment." 

EDWARD WILSON 

Worcester College, Oxford 

" The credit for noticing the marginalia in the Brasenose 

MS belongs to the late Mr Robin Peedell, formerly Assistant 

Librarian of the College; they were brought to my attention 

through the good offices of Mr L. D. Reynolds, Fellow of 

Brasenose College and Professor M. Winterbottom, Corpus 

Christi College, Oxford. I am grateful also to the Principal and 

Fellows of Brasenose College for permission to quote from 

their manuscript. 

CAXON, CAXTON: A PREDATING, 

A DEFINITION, AND 

A SUPPOSED DERIVATION 

OED has the following entry s.v. Caxon, sb. 1 

'(?from the personal surname Caxon] A kind of 

wig, now obsolete'. Illustrative quotations are 

taken from works applearing between 1756 and 

1834. 

A much more precise definition, however, 

can be found in an earlier work. Jane Barker, in 

the 'Introduction' to A Patch-Work Screen for 

Ladies (1723),' depicts people telling stories to 

1 Jane Barker, A Patch- Work Screen for the Ladies; or 

Love and Virtue Recommended (1723; repr. New York and 

London, 1973). 

while away a stagecoach journey. One passenger 

'ask[s] the Company, If they knew how il— 

dress'd Perukes came to be called KaxtonsT 

('Introduction', sig. A3b), and then tells the 

story of a thief who murdered a farmer, the 

farmer's wife, and a new baby. 

He [the thief] was hang'd in Chains by the 

Road-side near Kaxton [presumably Caxton, 

9 miles west of Cambridge]; an Example of 

the most vile Cruelty that could be committed. 

There happen'd to pass some Cambridge 

Scholars that Way to visit some Friends thereabouts; 

and the Weather being a little turbulent, 

the Wind and Wet so discompos'd 

their Wiggs, that when they came in, they 

fancy'd them to look like that on the Head of 

the Hang'd Man. This Fancy they carry'd 

back with them to Cambridge, and there 

broach'd it amongst the Youth of their Time; 

which, by Degrees, spread over the Nation. 

Afterwards, ... this Fancy was carried 

[abroad], so that in most Parts of Europe, to 

this Day, an ill-dress'd Wigg is call'd 

A CAXTON, OR KAK.(sig. A5b) 

Although the supposed derivation is probably 

a fancy of the author, the definition seems 

accurate. Certainly, none of the quotations in 

OED opposes Barker's definition. Further 

support comes from the much later definition of 

Francis Grose: 'CAXON. An old weatherbeaten 

wig' (Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar 

Tongue, 1785), and from Charles Lamb's 

description of Rev. James Boyer's 'passy, or 

passionate wig' as 'an old discoloured, unkempt, 

angry caxon' ('Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty 

Years ago'). Eric Partridge finds a continuation 

in theatrical slang: 'caxon, caxton and Caxton 

(theatrical) a wig, c. 19-20, ob ' (Dictionary 

of Slang and Unconventional English, 1984). 

Partridge, however, opposes the slang definition 

of Grose to the supposed standard English 

definition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 

taken from OED. Since the supposed 

standard definition is suspiciously vague, 

whereas the definitions of Barker and Grose are 

both precise, agreeing with one another and 

with the examples given in OED, the revisors 

should consider rewording the entry in OED. 

Barker's diminutive kak does not otherwise 

appear, but might be added to the entry for caxy.

Fuckin Abbot

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