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I recall the scene in Romeo and Juliet where the nurse goes on about an incident in Juliet's babyhood. Juliet had falen on her face and was crying, and the nurse's husband said "Did you fall on your face? You'll fall on your back when you get smarter, won't you?" and, in the nurse's words "The pretty thing, it stinted and said 'Aye'". So it's an old word.
We use "uncouth" now to mean "ignorant". There was a word in Old English, "uncuth" (where the "th" was an "eth", one of those crossed-d letters), meaning "unknown, unfamiliar", and its opposite number "cuth" meant "familiar and known".
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