Reply #49: This word as an interesting etymology:

[KansDem]

From the Wikipedia:

History
Cunt is an old Germanic word, and appeared as cunte in Middle English and kunta in Old Norse. It has cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish and Norwegian kunta†, Frisian kunte, and Dutch kut (while kont in Dutch means bum, buttocks, gender-neutral, but generally derogatory; 'stomme kont' means 'dumb arse'). Its original derivation is an Old Germanic stem kunton. It arose by Grimm's law operating on the Indo-European root gen/gon = "create, become" seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Indo-European root gwneH2/guneH2 = "woman" seen in gynaecology. Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus (vulva), French con, and Spanish coño have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus: cuneatus, wedge-shaped; cuneo v. fasten with a wedge; (figurative) to wedge in, squeeze in, leading to English words like cuneiform and cunnilingus.

It is worth quoting a scholarly reference: Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, New York: Greenwich House, Distributed by Crown Publishers, Inc. MCMLVIII, MCMLIX, MCMLXI, MCMLXVI, ISBN 0517414252, page 135.

cunt: ME cunte (occ counte), recorded once in OE: OFris kunte, akin to ON kunta, MLG-LG kunte, D kunte, MD conte; also to MF (and F) con, OF varr cun, cunne; like It conno, from L cunnus, s cun-. The presence of t in the Gmc has long puzzled the etymologists: even Walther von Wartburg aligns the Gmc kunta, kunte, with the L cunnus only under the aegis of a question-mark; for cunnus, E & M adduce the syn Gr kusthos and the Per kun, the posterior, but they omit to cite the Hit kun, tail; for kusthos, Hofmann proposes an orig *kuzdhos, with extended r *kus- or *keus- and with true IE r *ku- or *keu-, to hide or conceal, and he adduces L cutis, skin which has s cut-, extension of r *cu-, *ku-, the skin being a coverer.
But is it not probable that the word is of common Medit stock: Eg offers qefen-t, vagina, vulva, akin to the n-lacking Eg ka-t, vagina, vulva, mother, women collectively. There are also several Sem congnates. The basic idea is prob 'essential femineity'.
Cunt has been in common use in English since at least the 13th century. It did not appear in any major dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1961 (when it was included in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, with the comment "usu. considered obscene"). Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1972, which cites the word as having been in use since 1230 in what was supposedly a current London street name of "Gropecuntelane".

The word appears several times in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be thought of as obscene at this point, since it is used openly. A notable use is from the Miller's Tale "Pryvely he caught her by the queynte". The Wife of Bath also uses this term, "For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave/You shall have queynte right enough at eve...What aileth you to grouche thus and groan?/Is it for ye would have my queynte alone?". In modernised versions of these passages the word "queynte" is usually translated simply as "cunt" <2> <3>. However, in Chaucer's usage there seems to be an overlap between the words "cunt" and "quaint" (possibly derived from from the Latin for 'known'). Quaint was probably pronounced in Middle English in much the same way as cunt. It is sometimes unclear whether the two words were thought of as distinct from one another. Elsewhere in Chaucer's work the word queynte seems to be used with meaning comparable to the modern "quaint" (charming, appealing).

By Shakespeare's day, the word seems to have been thought of as obscene. Although Shakespeare doesn't use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still has fun with it, using wordplay to sneak it in. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet, as the castle's residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play, Hamlet asks Ophelia, "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Ophelia of course, replies, "No, my lord." Hamlet, feigning shock, says, "Do you think I meant country matters?" Then, to drive home the point that the accent is definitely on the first syllable of country, Shakespeare has Hamlet say, "That's a fair thought, to lie between maids' legs." Also see Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V): "There be her very C's, her U's, and her T's: and thus makes she her great P's." A related scene occurs in Henry V, when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the "gros et impudique" English words "foot" and "gown", which her English teacher has mispronounced as "coun". Presumably Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard "foot" as "foutre" (French, "fuck") and "coun" as "con" (French, "cunt").

By the 17th century a softer form of the word, cunny, came into use. This was probably a derived from a pun on "coney", meaning "rabbit", rather as "pussy" is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Massinger: "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'") Largely because of this usage, the word "coney" to refer to rabbits changed pronunciation from short "o" (like money and honey) to long "o" (cone, as in Coney Island), and has now almost completely disappeared from most dialects of English, much in the same way that the word "pussy" is now rarely used to refer to a cat in America.

Similar word-play has been used more recently. The British band The Sex Pistols recorded a song entitled '"Pretty Vacant", pronounced pretty vay-khunt.

Double act Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are often credited with having made the word more acceptable and accessible in the UK in the 20th Century through their Derek and Clive dialogues. In one sketch called "This Bloke Came Up To Me", the word is used 31 times in the course

edited for spelling