We all(?) know the four-letter words fuck, cunt, cock, arse, shit, piss, and fart. Doubtless imaginative readers can think of others. It is convenient that dick has four letters, but such words as tit and prick do not oblige.

Edward Sagarin has suggested in his "Anatomy of Dirty Words" that there is only one four-letter word in the English language - fuck. We know what he means. It could be argued that to many people this word has a unique status, a peculiar aura of foulness, and that where other four-letter words may be tolerated, fuck would still be beyond the pale. Until recently the word was banned from all dictionaries ever since the eighteenth century.

The earliest dictionary to record the word is John Florio's Italian- English dictionary, "A Worlde of Wordes" (1598).