A brief history of insults | Hacker News Reader

A brief history of insults

nytimes.com

66 pointsAmorymeltzer39 comments

http://web.archive.org/web/20230625171204/https://www.nytime...

Seems like someone may have the pleasure of becoming interested in the matter and going further. Perhaps they may resurrect Maledicta, the journal of verbal aggression. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maledicta. I remember going through the collection of issues of the journal at the Perry Castañeda library at the University of Texas-Austin many years ago. I highly recommend it. Read about things like Spanish potentiation of insults (like raising to a power), and other things I forget. The only reason I can recall Spanish potentiation is that I speak Spanish and I never realized such a thing existed.

There was, of course, an article (or issue?) dedicated to "your momma" jokes. The most memorable one was an Italian one that goes:

If the streets were paved with cocks, your momma would walk on her ass.

Ooh, good stuff!

Reminds me of the excellent, but unfortunately short-lived, "Better Off Ted".

The episode these bits (link below) are from was, (also) unfortunately, far less amusing / acerbic, as aired. But, while the "official episode" may have been rather weak for that show in general, these far higher-quality outtakes live on:

https://youtu.be/Bh7Nz4bIwss

i thought i was the only one who thoroughly enjoyed that show! nice to see someone else appreciated that short-lived show enough to mention it.

I remember my times at the Perry Castañeda Library. (ex UT) here. Insults in México are an art and science on itself. There are dozens and dozens of pendejos types and categories: Pendejo exclusivo: El tipo que viene y te dice: "Yo no soy tu pendejo" Pendejo esférico: No importa por donde lo veas, sigue siendo un pendejo. Pendejo referencial: Al dar direcciones dices: ¿Ves a ese pendejo? Allí dobla a la derecha. The list goes on. I don't have a fair english translation for the word pendejo.

That's interesting. I grew up in Utah and many students at public schools were the children of first-generation Mexican immigrants (or first-generation themselves) and often the answer to, "What does pendejo mean?" (because of course that question came up in Spanish class) would be something along the lines of, "I can't describe it". This helps to explain why if the question itself seems to have a parsing error. In this case, "What are this word's meanings?" might have been a more yielding question (not than an 8th grader is likely to think of that).

Back in the 80s, a book made the rounds at work that was composed of Japanese insults with a brief description of each. For several weeks afterwards we were busy insulting each other with phrases that were innocuous (or just odd) in English but were vile insults in Japanese.

I've long forgotten the title of the book. I've searched for likely titles, but came up empty. Too bad.

Not this one? https://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Japanese-Epithets-Language...

Ah, thank you! I had failed to search for "epithet". I was always searching for "insults".

It looks like the same book, though it says it was revised in 2006. I hope they didn't bowdlerize it.

Anyhow, I promptly ordered it!

My friends and colleagues should be suiting up for the coming onslaught of insults from me.

You are still working at the same place as back in the 80s? Impressive!

IMHO this is one of the funniest text in the history of insults.

Letter of the Zaporozhian Cossacks of Ukraine replying to the Sultan of Turkey:

O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, f##k thy mother. Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fu##er of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig’s snout, mare’s arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother! So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won’t even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we’ll conclude, for we don’t know the date and don’t own a calendar; the moon’s in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day’s the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

Sadly… most certainly it is a fake.

Besides the "Better Off Ted outtakes" (comment on another comment), this also brought to mind Chappelle's Show "Player Haters Ball", Letterkenny ("chirps", etc.), and The Inbetweeners. I'm sure there are others rattling around in my head I'm forgetting ...

https://youtu.be/fKIwj1TQmFs

https://youtu.be/PjdFWEGkdFo

https://youtu.be/K1iifyImWtk

(That last is a little guide to insults via ITN & courtesy of Simon & Joe [Will and Simon, on show]).

Of course, there's always Weird Al's parody that's a compendium of "fat jokes":

https://youtu.be/t2mU6USTBRE

... (edit: formatting)

Chirping is a rural tradition and sport, and a very, very refined Canadian art. Other than Letterkenny, it doesn't appear in our media culture because people from the city are usually not equipped to survive the wreckage. You really have to be gentle with them because they can carry the insult for life. The only people I have heard who come close to the levels of Canadian chirpery were from Texas, and even they were from at least a few hours clear of Austin. The art is in never actually destroying the bridge, but you get points for nuking it into glass.

Just to riff on your list. "Reading" from the 80's NY queer scene came to mind, as talked about in the great documentary Paris is Burning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnVSklVO-t4

See Also: Question Time in the Australian Parliment .. at its peak you can witness Prime Minister Paul Keating describing an opposing member as a shiver in search of a spine to run down (and other equally well turned rips).

The only thing that is truly an insult is the one your opponent reacts to. Everything else is you scratching your bumhole. In fact, if you're not getting the reaction you intended, then that's still just you scratching your bumhole. History is rife with inadequately witted so-sos who like to pretend otherwise. The best way to insult someone is to decide what you want to achieve, then find the appropriate target. If you hit the target, but didn't achieve what you thought you'd get, then you failed.

For those wondering about the lines of Catullus that the NYT found unfit to print:

Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō

"I will sodomize you and face-fuck you"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16

I will add that the inclusion of ego is kind of unusual for Latin, which makes me personally inclined to translate it as "I will personally etc etc".

Yes, normally "ego" is added for emphasis and it is usually best translated as "myself".

I've learned by now that almost no one originated the quotes commonly attributed to them, so you should always look them up:

"a sheep in sheep’s clothing" I always thought it was Churchill. But, sigh:

https://wordhistories.net/2019/08/04/sheep-sheeps-clothing/

I've also heard "a wolf in cheap clothing".

A little story about quotes. At the battle of Bastogne, General MacAuliffe replied to the Wehrmacht's demand that he surrender with the one word "nuts".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bastogne

I didn't believe it. Does that sound like something a GI would ever say? So I asked my dad (WW2, USAF vet and historian) was that quote true? Turns out, my dad had worked briefly for MacAuliffe, didn't believe it either. He asked MacAuliffe, who laughed, and said replied "what the hell do you think I said?"

I.e. the actual reply was "fuck you". Now that I can believe. The Stars & Stripes newspaper couldn't print that, so rewrote it as "nuts", and the rest is history.

P.S. what makes "nuts" even less credible is the expectation that the Wehrmacht would know what it meant. For example, at Caltech there were a lot of students from Hong Kong. One of them was a friend of mine, and he asked me, very puzzled, "what does go nuts mean?" I, being the boorish oaf that I am, said "it means go bananas". He looked even more puzzled, so I let him out of his misery saying it meant to go crazy." Ah, he replied.

But I'm sure the Germans knew well what FU meant.

> "it means go bananas"

Surely it means "Balls."

"Go bananas" means "go mad", I think, although I can't derive an etymology.

"Nuts" seems to mean "mad", as in "nutty as a fruitcake", which for me brings to mind something like a Dundee cake (heavy mixture of dried fruit and nuts). I still can't derive an etymological connection between madness and (fruit|nuts).

Nut can mean head, although it's a bit dated - giving nutcase and, in British English, nutter. I'd guess that's the root of it and that substitution gets you to other botanicals.

Edit: I checked OED and it gives that derivation route.

"Nut" as "head" makes sense. And it's still current; if you strike someone in the face with your forehead, you have nutted them.

So I buy "nutcase" as "head-case", therefore "mad".

I believe "go bananas" is a bit of metonymy from "go ape", possibly through "go apeshit", with the idea that bananas are something of a precursor to primate excrement.

Charles Nelson Reilly always made going bananas and being bright and gay and fruity seem like so much fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNvy-YnSw3c

The Life of Reilly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1gTQ5Gxhpw&list=PL59B970677...

"go nuts" and "go bananas" mean the same thing - go mad.

They recreated that scene in Battle of the Bulge. (1965).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8mb3O5u6ig

"Nuts" was a sanitized version of FU. I don't think Stars & Stripes meant it as "go bananas." They meant it as "nuts to you!" (a phrase which Feynman's wife actually uses to him in a letter, in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!)

Sometimes the distinction between insult, slur and slander isn't so clear. It's interesting that the insults tend to be viewed as relatively harmless (in some countries, like the US, they are even legal) while the latter two are much more serious offenses. Though it is often unclear how to categorize an expression.

https://yiddishradioproject.org/exhibits/stutchkoff/curses.p...

>> A young child should be named after him.

That's a deep cut.

Got to mention the Pharcyde surely? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnCeZY6nxjQ

Achilles unloads a few fair insults on Agamemnon in the first book of the Iliad, "drunkard, face like a dog, brave as a deer".

They aren't all that clever, but one should consider the context of an armed society--Achilles has just been restrained by Athena from taking his sword to Agamemnon.

Thoroughly recommend Roger's Profanisaurus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger's_Profanisaurus

So a mutton shunter is not a sheep shagger.

The most stinging insult involves the exposure of hypocrisy on the part of the target of the insult, at least for the intellectual class. Demonstrating that the target of the insult will happily role over and say 1 + 1 = 3 if their masters ask it of them, because they are a weak little tool used by others to achieve their own goals, when in reality everyone knows that 1 + 1 = 2, and yet that individual has been attempting to hold themselves up as the moral legitimate factor in the equation, well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude

Of course it's the Germans who came up with that one. Humans are falliable, and you'd be surprised what people would do for a reliable paycheck, in this capitalist dystopia.

I love these strange article topics I wonder how they come up with them.

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