Journalists were advised to refrain from censoring the word but use it sparingly and only when its inclusion was essential to the story. Because of its increasing usage in the public forum, in 2005 the word was included for the first time as one of three vulgarities in The Canadian Press's Canadian Press Caps and Spelling guide. Nevertheless, the word has become increasingly less vulgar and more publicly acceptable, an example of the ' dysphemism treadmill', wherein former vulgarities become inoffensive and commonplace. Andrea Millwood Hargrave's 2000 study of the attitudes of the British public found that fuck was considered the third most severe profanity and its derivative motherfucker second.

Some English-speaking countries censor it on television and radio. It is unclear whether the word has always been considered vulgar or, if not, when it first came to be used to describe (often in an extremely angry, hostile or belligerent manner) unpleasant circumstances or people in an intentionally offensive way, such as in the term motherfucker, one of its more common usages in some parts of the English-speaking world.

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