ABSTRACT
The long march of the f-word through the institutions of the English language has, as one has been making it measured strides forward. The story up till here: Thomas Bowdler has been long ago consigned to oblivion, and in the second half of the twentieth century only a sector of the mainstream press has been holding out against outright four-letterization of publishable journalese. One journalistic presentation of the counter-cultural offensive which is committed, as one newspaper headline aphoristically put it, to the post-modern thesis: SWEARING IS THE CURSE OF OUR LANGUAGE. Most guidebooks contain at least a few pages of phrases and vocabulary which would assist a bewildered tourist caught among the indigenous personnel of some foreign land; and they have also been moving into the era of "dirty realism". It is often the case that great historic steps forward are modestly undertaken, and new empires of the English tongue are conquered in almost a fit of absentmindedness.
