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Message:: [QUOTE="lehmansterms, post: 7774505, member: 80804"]That the engraving/countermark (if it is a c/m) is on the obverse is the most unusual thing about this piece. I have seen several specimens on which the word "CENT" is sculpted into that other word. Frankly, although I'm not going to argue with the OED or whatever source you're citing, I suspect the use (as opposed to the appearance in print) of "the C word" goes back way farther than the 13th century. I have seen it rendered in Latin as "C*nnus" and ascribed to times earlier than the 1st or 2nd century BC. If, like many Latin terms, its root is from a Greek term, it would be even older than that. It was considered a mild insult when used to describe a man. Not sure what, if anything, it may have signified to the women of the age.Originally, it was merely a descriptive word to name a part of the body - like arm or knee or nose - and carried no negative connotation until one of the more relatively recent periods of pseudo-puritanism (probably 18th or 19th century?) in which all sorts of normal words and actions are demonized for the sake of "religion" - or just to make people with nothing better to do or worry about feel as though their prejudices are justified and correct to push onto others; and so they may feel they are entitled to look down upon others for their continued use.[/QUOTE]