Of course all errors are my own fault. For the earlier editions, Bernard W. Kane was indefatigable in providing buckets of useful suggestions; John Simpson generously sent me several citations from the files of the Oxford English Dictionary; Fred Shapiro’s wizardry with database searches yielded a large number of updatings and important additions to the text; James Rader of Merriam-Webster sent early examples of several terms I had difficulty tracking down. My former colleagues at Random House provided assistance and support of various flavors. Professor Anatoly Liberman was kind enough to share his detailed researches into the etymology and bibliography of fuck. His entry on the word in the Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology is by far the most comprehensive treatment of the etymology of fuck ever published. H. Bosley Woolf generously sent me a copy of his privately printed pamphlet The GI’s Favorite Four Letter Word, the earliest published work devoted solely to our word. James Lambert, editor of the Macquarie Book of Slang, was kind enough to provide extensive citations from Australia and New Zealand in addition to many quotations from often obscure British and American sources.
