Read this fucking column, fuck.

Fuddle-duddle.

If you are Canadian, and of a certain vintage, you know what that refers to: the F-word. F**k.

It’s been around for a while, that word. The first recorded use of f**k came in 1528, when some anonymous monk wrote on the margins of a manuscript about (ironically) morality: “O D f**king Abbot.”

Was the Abbot the unhappy monk’s boss? Was the Abbot less-than-chaste? The answers to these and other critical questions have been lost to the mists of time. (The funny part? The “D’ refers to “damned,” which I can write in a family-friendly newspaper. The F-bomb? Can’t.)

I’m not going to get into what the word actually means, because it means what it has always meant, more or less. That is, what the Fourth Earl of Chesterfield described hereto: “The position is ridiculous, and the pleasure is momentary.” In many languages, it has been alternatively deployed as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. It is a very, um, flexible word.

The first known Canadian use of it in politics is 1971, although Hansard (and history) record it as “fuddle-duddle.”  Two Progressive Conservative MPs accused Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of mouthing the words “f**k off” in the House of Commons, which he in fact had. Delighted to have important policy to report on, journalists swarmed the Liberal leader. Trudeau shrugged - naturally, obviously, of course he did - and said, enigmatically: “What is the nature of your thoughts, gentlemen, when you say 'fuddle duddle' or something like that?”

Pierre Trudeau: the only guy who can turn “f**k” into a Ship of Theseus Paradox, to wit: if all the parts of something are replaced, is the thing still the same thing? (Something like that.)

Trudeau got away with it, of course. Eons later, his son Justin - who much later assumed the Prime Ministerial mantle, albeit not very well - cleared up any doubts: “I’ll tell you a secret: He didn’t actually just say fuddle duddle.”

No kidding, Just-o. Despite it being unparliamentary language, and despite it frowned upon in (most) mixed company, f**k is f**king ubiquitous these days - including in politics, where it used to a total f**king no-go zone.

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