By the time that section of the letter C was published for the OxfordEnglish Dictionary the only cunt that was listed by Murray was cunt-, a cross-reference to the prefixes cont-, count- with no mention whatsoever of thefemale body part. Fuck was also left out. Although these old words had beenin use since the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, they wouldhave to wait until the 1970s to be included in the OED. Murray did, however,include pudendum, a word derived from Latin for ‘that of which one ought tobe ashamed’, which he defined as ‘the privy parts, the external genital organs’with no reference to a woman or – God forbid – her vulva.

a fellowlexicographer and one of the Dictionary People, John Stephen Farmer, hadhis own legal drama. Farmer was writing a slang dictionary with WilliamHenley, and was struggling to publish the second volume (containing theletters C and F) of his work on grounds of obscenity. Farmer took hispublisher to court for breach of contract in 1891, and tried to convince a jurythat writing about obscene words in a dictionary did not make him personallyguilty of obscenity, but he lost the case and was ordered to pay costs.Eventually, he found fresh printers and avoided the Obscene Publications Actby arguing that his dictionary was published privately for subscribers only, notthe public, and the remarkable Slang and Its Analogues by Farmer and Henleywas published in seven volumes (from 1890 to 1904), with cunt and fuck andmany other words regarded as lewd on its pages. Farmer’s legal case and thepublic outcry that ensued was a clear deterrent for Murray.

Dixon’s standards were variable: he was happy for Murray to include ‘cunt’ but drew the line at ‘cundum ... a contrivance used by fornicators, to save themselves from a well-deserved clap; also by others who wish to enjoy copulation without the possibility of impregnation’.