cunt: [13] The first known reference to the word cunt is in an early medieval Oxford street-name: Gropecuntlane (it was afterwards renamed Magpie lane). This was around 1230, and from later in the same century there are records of a street of the same name (presumably the haunt of prostitutes) in London, probably around the area of modern Cheapside. York, too, had its Grapcunt lane in the 15th century. Cunt has a number of Germanic cognates, including Old Norse kunta, Middle Dutch kunte, and possibly Middle High German kotze ‘prostitute’, which point to a prehistoric Germanic ancestor *kunton ‘female genitals’, but beyond that its origins are not known.
A link has been suggested with Latin cuneus ‘wedge’.
