LOS ANGELES — What the f—? The F-word, once seen as the most shocking expletive in the English language, has become commonplace in pop culture.

Deadpool & Wolverine, the R-rated Marvel film from family friendly Walt Disney, features the word “fuck” more than 100 times. Taylor Swift sings it 18 times in just one song on her hit album The Tortured Poets Department, and many other pop stars utter it freely.

As its public usage has increased, the word has undergone what language experts call a “semantic shift,” or a change in meaning over time, said Roy Peter Clark, a writing teacher and author of several books on writing.

He points to a scene in My Lady Jane, a drama series on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service. A girl who appears to be roughly 10 years old uses the word as her older sister is about to be beheaded under orders from Queen Mary.

“Fuck Mary,” the girl says.

Putting the F-word in the mouth of a child actor, Mr. Clark said, shows it has become less taboo over time.

“It’s used in so many different ways, some that are clearly very negative, and other ways that are humorous, and other ways that are mischievous and other ways that are emphatic,” said Mr. Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit focused on media. “It has become less negative.”

A British study published in 2021 found that “fuck” was the most-used swear word and was particularly popular with teenagers and young adults. A 2023 study published in the Journal of Pragmatics sought to understand how its usage had evolved.

Comparing conversations among British teenagers in the 1990s and 2010s, researchers Robbie Love and Anna-Brita Stenstrom found less slinging of the F-word as an insult, or as a term for sexual intercourse.

The word was more likely to appear in phrases such as “what the fuck?” and “for fuck’s sake,” they found. Teens tossed the word around in friendly conversations.

Karen North, a psychologist and professor of digital social media at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, said habituation likely has made the word less jarring.

“Anything that you experience over and over and over again, you’re desensitized to,” Ms. North said. “If you’re in a room that smells very bad, then after a few minutes you don’t smell it.”

With language, “if you keep hearing the F-word, or any particular inflammatory or emotional thing over and over and over again, you’ll start desensitizing because your senses get used to it,” Ms. North said.

Many people still find the F-word highly offensive. Its use is often cited by politicians to ban books such as J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye in schools and libraries, Mr. Clark noted.

At Disney, executives offered “nothing but support” after seeing the foul language in the new Deadpool movie, said Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios. They understood that the raunchy humor was a key to the success of two earlier Deadpool movies made by Fox.

When Disney bought the Deadpool character as part of a deal with Fox, Marvel filmmakers decided “we were going to stay true to the spirit of what Deadpool is,” Mr. Feige said.

Deadpool & Wolverine was rated R in the US and 15 in the United Kingdom, a signal to parents that it was not intended for young children. In the Philippines, it received a rating of R-16 from the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board. R-16 restricts viewership to those aged 16 and above, with the reviewers citing the film’s mature content as the reason.

Audiences embraced the movie, which racked up the biggest opening weekend of the year with $211 million at US and Canadian box offices. Total global sales reached an estimated $824 million through Sunday.

For the Deadpool character, the F-word “makes sense, and if it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t feel right,” said 22-year-old Marvel fan Gaige Johnson from Michigan.

Another Marvel fan, Diana Alvort from Mexico, laughed when asked if there was too much swearing in the film.

“Fuck that,” she said. “Come on, it’s a fun movie. Let’s not get so serious. You know, there’s moments for everything and so I don’t have a problem with that. Just enjoy it.” — Reuters

IT IS a startling image from ancient Egypt — a mummy discovered during a 1935 archaeological expedition at Deir el-Bahari near Luxor of a woman with her mouth wide open in what looks like an anguished shriek.

Scientists now have an explanation for the “Screaming Woman” mummy after using CT scans to perform a “virtual dissection.” It turns out she may have died in agony and experienced a rare form of muscular stiffening, called a cadaveric spasm, that occurs at the moment of death.

The examination indicated that the woman was about 48 years old when she died, had lived with mild arthritis of the spine and had lost some teeth, said Cairo University radiology professor Sahar Saleem, who led the study published on Friday in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.

Her body was well-preserved, being embalmed roughly 3,500 years ago during ancient Egypt’s glittering New Kingdom period using costly imported ingredients such as juniper oil and frankincense resin, Saleem added.

The ancient Egyptians viewed preservation of the body after death as crucial to secure a worthy existence in the afterlife. It was customary during the mummification process to remove the internal organs, aside from the heart, but this had not occurred with this woman.

“In ancient Egypt, the embalmers took care of the dead body so it would look beautiful for the afterlife. That’s why they were keen to close the mouth of the dead by tying the jaw to the head to prevent the normal postmortem jaw drop,” Saleem said.

But the quality of the embalmment ingredients “ruled out that the mummification process had been careless and that the embalmers had simply neglected to close her mouth. In fact, they mummified her well and gave her expensive funerary apparels — two expensive rings made of gold and silver and a long haired-wig made from fibers from the date palm,” Saleem added.

“This opened the way to other explanations of the widely opened mouth — that the woman died screaming from agony or pain and that the muscles of the face contracted to preserve this appearance at the time of death due to cadaveric spasm,” Saleem said. “The true history or circumstances of the death of this woman are unknown, hence the cause of her screaming facial appearance cannot be established with certainty.”

Cadaveric spasm, a poorly understood condition, occurs after severe physical or emotional suffering, with the contracted muscles becoming rigid immediately following death, Saleem said.

“Unlike postmortem rigor mortis, cadaveric spasm affects only one group of muscles, not the entire body,” Saleem added.

Asked whether the woman may have been embalmed while alive, Saleem added, “I don’t believe that this is possible.”

Saleem was unable to determine how the woman died, saying, “We frequently cannot determine the cause of death in a mummy unless there is CT evidence of fatal trauma.” Saleem cited evidence of a fatal head injury, slit neck, and heart disease in three royal mummies.

The “Screaming Woman” was found at the site of the ancient city of Thebes during excavation of the tomb of a high-ranking official named Senmut, the architect, overseer of royal works, and reputed lover of queen Hatshepsut, who reigned from 1479-1458 BC.

The mummy was inside a wooden coffin in a burial chamber beneath Senmut’s family tomb. Her identity has not been determined but her jewelry — the gold and silver rings with images of scarab beetles, a symbol of resurrection, made of the gemstone jasper — showed her socioeconomic status.

“She was likely a close family member to be buried and share the family’s eternal resting place,” Saleem said.

The study revealed details of her wig. Its spiral braids were treated with the minerals quartz, magnetite, and albite to harden them and provide the black color indicative of youth. Her natural hair had been dyed with henna and juniper oil.

A number of ancient mummies, in Egypt and the Americas, have been found with facial expressions resembling a scream — eerily similar to Norwegian painter Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

“I use this painting in my public lectures about the screaming mummies,” Saleem said. — Reuters