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The Evolution of Insults

Because I love swearing (and quite possibly have an undiagnosed case of Tourettes), I have put together a post on the evolution of insults, so I can use words like fuck, shit, ass, crap, and crappy ass shit-head, repeatedly, in the name of education.

Insults and profanity have a colourful history in the English language and though they have come to be much more candid and offensive, they also seem to carry less weight than they used to. In fact, research into the topic of insults throughout history shows that from the late 16th through to the early 19th centuries, insulting someone publicly or privately, could have put you behind bars, and there are a chartered number of insult-fuelled prosecutions in the court of London during that time.

Nowadays, tape-recorded conversations find that roughly 80-90 spoken words each day are swear words. Research looking at swearing in 1986, 1997, and 2006 in America found the same top ten words were used among the roughly 70 different taboo words. The most used taboo words were fuck, shit, hell, damn, goddamn, Jesus Christ, ass, oh my god, bitch, and sucks—these ten made up about 80% of all profanities. Notably, fuck and shit, accounted for one third to one half of them.

To begin our fun and entertaining assessment of insults through time, let us begin with the Bee’s Knees of Profanities: William Shakespeare. Not only have we credited Shakespeare for coining thousands of words used in the English language today, he is also one of time’s most brilliant verbal abusers. The beauty of a Shakespearian diatribe is that not only does the insultee find him or herself having to question whether they have just been had, but in wondering, looks twice the fool.

Let us wind up our most offensive tongues with some insults from famous Shakespeare plays and how they would be interpreted today…

No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip, she is spherical, like a globe, I could find out contries in her (Comedy of Errors)
(Yo mama’s so fat NASA has to orbit a satellite around her!)

A villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart (The Merchant of Venice)
(That dude’s a piece of shit)

O most insatiate and luxurious woman (Titus Andronicus)
(Woman, you’re a gold-diggin’ ho)

His wit’s as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard (Henry IV Part 2)
(What a dumbass)

O, were mine eye bans into bullets turned, that in a rage I might shoot them at your faces (Henry VI Part 1)
(I’ll execute every motherfuckin’ last one of you!)

Go shake your ears
(You’re an ass!) (refers to donkey ears)

Damn her, lewd minx (Othello)
(Fucking Slut!)

Bless me, what a fry of fornication is at the door (King Henry VIII)
(What’s that bastard doing here?)

Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush (The Taming of the Shrew)
(Get lost ass-wipe)

Courtesy would seem to cover sin (Pericles, Prince of Tyre)
(What a phoney)

Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast killed (Much Ado About Nothing)
(Altoids called!)

Four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one (Much Ado About Nothing)
(That shit is bananas)

Beg that thou may have leave to hang thyself (The Merchant of Venice)
(Go play in traffic)

His will is most malignant (King Henry VIII)
(What an asshole)

He hath been five thousand years a boy (Love’s Labour Lost)
(Immature douche)

He is deformed, crooked, old and sere, ill faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere, vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind, stigmatical in making, worse in mind (Comedy of Errors)
(You fugly, shit-for-brains)

The word shit was beginning to make an appearance around this time, likely derived from Old English, it was a blend of the nouns scite (dung) and scitte (diarrhoea), and the verb scītan (to defecate,  to cover with excrement); eventually it morphed into Middle English schītte (excrement), schyt (diarrhoea) and shiten (to defecate). A popular belief is that the word shit originated as an acronym for “Ship High In Transit“, referring to the apparent need to stow manure well above the water line when transporting it by ship. This has been shown to be a myth. [Wikipedia]

From the 1920’s through to the 1940’s we see a shift from the poetic quips of the Elizabethan era into all-encompassing slang words to express offensive remarks…

Bug-eyed Betty
(That is one ugly bitch)

Bushwa
(Bullshit!)

Dewdropper
(You lazy, unemployed good-for-nothing)

Four-flusher
(Mooch!) (particularly one who is critical of wealth while being a notorious freeloader)

Mind your potatoes
(Mind your business)

Quiff
(Slut)

Rag-a-muffin
(Dirty, disheveled)

Wet-Blanket
(A drag, killjoy)

Cement Mixer
(Bad dancer)

Rummy
(Drunken bum)

Abercrombie
(Know-it-all)

Greaseball, half portion, wet smack, jelly bean
(Loser)

So’s your old man
(So’s your mom)

After two world wars and a Great Depression, a Cold war set in and the 1950’s became a time where insults were icing up…

Gee Whiz
(Holy Shit!)

Cut the gas
(Shut up)

What a fake out
(What a disappointment)

Nosebleed
(Fucking bore!)

Fream
(Loser)

Thankfully, by the late 1960’s verbal ammo was fully loaded and back with a vengeance

Clod, Clyde, Melvin
(You fool, clumsy idiot)

Cocunut
(Empty-head, numbskull)

Ding-bat, dip
(Idiot)

Get with the words
(Get to the point)

Fuck
(First appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary (along with the word cunt) in 1972, however it appeared in John Ash’s 1775 A New and Complete Dictionary, listed as “low” and “vulgar,” but then disappeared from any widely-consulted dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1965.)

Idiot-stick
(Tool)

Reject

Scurvy, Crummy, Wiped Out “That girl is scurvy, crummy, wiped out”
(Damn she’s nasty)

What a bum trip
(What a waste of time)

Candyass

Ditz

Dipstick

Dude
(In the 60’s dude was a geek or a panty waist)

Fink
(Tattle tale)

Groady
(That’s fucking nasty)

Skag
(Ugly, ugly girl)

Skuzz
(Lowdown, undesirable)

Slut

Sosh
(Snob)

Gag me with a spoon
(Very, very gross)

Up your ass with a piece of glass
(Fuck you and I hope it hurts)

By the 80’s and 90’s, Beavis and Butthead became the Shakespeare’s of the Pepsi Generation, and an insult just wasn’t an insult if it didn’t include some derivative word in reference to the phallus, the pooper or throw up…

Dill-hole

Butt-munch

Dickweed

Pindick

Pencil-dick

Cock breath

Penis breath (made famous by the movie E.T.)

Ass-munch

Ass-muncher

Asswad

Ass-sucker

Ass-licker

Twerp

Butt plug

Dickslap

Barf me out

Dweeb

Dumbass

Douchebag

Dick

Dickbrain

Dickhead

Twit

Airhead

Barf bag

Dipstick

Freak of nature

These days, insults can still blend a decent mélange of different verbal attacks from yesteryear, however as mentioned at the beginning of the article, they tend to be more overt and crass…

Bitch

Bitchass

Blow job

Cockface

Cockfucker

Cockbite

Cockburger

Cockmonkey

Cockshit

Cockass

Clitfuck

Clitface

Cunt

Cuntface

Cuntslut

Dick

Dickbag

Dildo

Douche (or douchebag)

Dumbfuck

Dumbshit

Fuckbag

Fuckass

Fuckface

Fuckhead

Fuckhole

Fuckwad

Motherfucker

Skank

Tard

Twat

Sadly, for all my cuss-loving, insult-fiending friends, I must conclude our adventure through Vulgaria and give my brain a rest, before I start telling my grandmother what a sweet skank she is.

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