Futuere
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Futuō, infinitive futuere, perfect futuī, past participle futūtum, Latin for "to copulate", is richly attested and useful. Not only the word itself, but also derived words such as perfututum, which could be translated "totally fucked", and dēfutūta, "fucked out, exhausted from intercourse", are attested in Classical Latin literature. The derived noun futūtiō, "act of intercourse", also exists in Classical Latin, and the nomen agentis futūtor, corresponding to the English epithet "fucker", also derives from that word.
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Etymology
Theories are:
- Akin to battuere, "to beat"; this metaphor has a long Indo-European heritage; but battuere may be a late borrowing from Germanic.
- Tucker's dictionary invites comparison with cōnfūtō, "suppress" or "beat down".
- From *fūtus (4th decl.), a verbal noun from root fu-, Indo-European bhu ("be", "become"), and originally may have referred to intercourse for procreation.
Usage
Futuō is richly attested in all its forms in Latin literature. It is in itself used metaphorically in Catullus 6, which speaks of latera ecfutūta, funds exhausted, literally "fucked away." Catullus 41 speaks of a puella dēfutūta, a girl exhausted from sexual activity; while Catullus 29 similarly speaks of a mentula diffutūta, a penis similarly worn out.
Futuō, unlike "fuck", was more frequently used in erotic and celebratory senses rather than derogatory ones or insults. A woman of Pompeii wrote the graffito fututa sum hic ("I got laid here") and prostitutes, canny at marketing, appear to have written other graffiti complimenting their customers for their sexual prowess: Felix bene futuis ("Felix, you have fucked well"); Victor bene valeas qui bene futuis ("Victor, best wishes to one who has fucked well.", with futuis corresponding to classical futuisti. It is famously used erotically in Catullus 32:
- sed domi maneas paresque nobis
novem continuas fututiones.- ("but you remain at home and prepare for us nine acts of fucking, one after the other.")
Futuō in its active voice was used of women only when it was imagined that they were taking the active role thought appropriate to the male partner by the Romans. The woman in Martial VII:
- Ipsarum tribadum tribas, Philaeni
recte, quo futuis, vocas amicam
is described as a tribas, a lesbian.
Synonyms and metaphors
The aggressive sense of English "fuck" and "screw" was not strongly attached to futuō in Latin. Instead, these senses attached themselves to pēdīcāre and irrumāre, "to sodomise" and "to force fellatio", respectively, which were used famously and hostilely in Catullus 16:
- Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.- ("I will buttfuck and facefuck you, faggot Aurelius and pervert Furius, because you thought me indecent because my poems are somewhat sissified.")
Pēdīcāre is often thought to be a Greek loanword in Latin (from the noun Template:Polytonic (paidika) "boyfriend"), but the long "i" is an obstacle. Other more neutral synonyms for futuō in Latin include coeō, coīre, literally "to go with," whence Latin and English coitus.
Note: Irrumāre, which in English is denoted by the passive construction "to be sucked", is an active verb in Latin, since the irrumator was considered to be the active partner, the fellator the passive. Irrumātiō is the counterpart of fellatio; in Roman terms, which are the opposite way round to modern conceptions, the giver of oral sex inserts his penis into the mouth of the receiver.
In the Romance languages
Futuō, a core item of the lexicon, lives on in most of the Romance languages, sometimes with its sense somewhat weakened: Catalan fotre, French foutre, Spanish joder, Portuguese foder, Galician foder, Romanian fute (futere), Italian fottere. A famous ribald song in Old Occitan sometimes attributed to the troubadour William IX of Aquitaine reads:
- Tant las fotei com auziretz:
Cen e quatre vint et ueit vetz,
Q'a pauc no-i rompei mos corretz
E mos arnes- ("I fucked them as much as you will hear: a hundred and eighty-eight times. I most nearly broke my equipment -- and my tool.")
