https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/crosswords/insults.html Skip to content Sections SEARCH Gameplay Today's Paper Gameplay|A Brief History of Insults (and So's Your Mother) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/crosswords/insults.html * Give this article * * * 19 Advertisement Continue reading the main story Supported by Continue reading the main story A Brief History of Insults (and So's Your Mother) Since the beginning of time, humans have looked for ways to knock one another down a few pegs. We really haven't changed much. * Give this article * * * 19 An illustration of a museum with the different periods of insults covered in this article as the artwork. Insults have existed for a very long time.Credit...Ryan Johnson Deb Amlen By Deb Amlen Published June 6, 2023Updated June 8, 2023 Many animal species have some sort of group hierarchy, where the leaders work very hard to remain at the top of the ladder and the rest of the group desperately clings to the rungs below. Humans are no different, despite what you may have heard about all men being created equal. Many members of the animal kingdom settle social disputes physically, but in a verbal species such as Homo sapiens, put-downs have been used since time immemorial to level the playing field and raise the relative status of the insult flinger. Despite the different time periods and languages used, the content of insults hasn't evolved: They're still highly personal barbs about people's courage (or lack thereof), status, competence, appearance, hygiene, sexual prowess and lineage. You would think that we, as a species, would have evolved past our feelings of status insecurity by now, but since we haven't, it's worth looking back at where we come from, insult-wise. To paraphrase the astronomer Carl Sagan, you must know the past to understand the present. At the very least, we may be able to pick up some good ones from our ancestors. For this learning experience, we have selected a few well-known stingers as examples. Biblical Barbs Image Credit...Ryan Johnson "Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman!" (1 Samuel 20:30, KJV) Even a mild oath such as "You S.O.B.!" just hits differently when it's the Old Testament's King Saul doing the swearing. Oh, and there's that side barb where he calls his wife rebellious. Because heaven forbid. * " ... of your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. What/who is it?" As we have already mentioned, it's helpful to know our past in order to understand our present. Those half good-natured stingers that target people's mothers may have become popular in the 20th century, but a message scratched onto a clay tablet in Babylonia in approximately 3500 B.C. indicates that the genre may have started much earlier. The tablet was worn, but part of it could still be read. It contained the above riddle. No answer could be found on the tablet, but this is considered by archaeologists with too much time on their hands to be the world's first "Your mom" joke. * "And the young men that were grown up with him spake unto him, saying, Thus shalt thou speak unto this people that spake unto thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins." (1 Kings 12:10 KJV) Sometimes insults can backfire on the speaker. The above excerpt presents a good argument for not stocking an advisory council with your fraternity buddies. King Rehoboam, who was a son of and the successor to King Solomon, was asked by the Israelites if he would please cut their taxes just a little bit because, whoa, his father had been really heavy-handed with the taxing. The more mature councilors advised Rehoboam to work with the Israelites, but then his young friends weighed in and encouraged him to say, in so many words, "You think my father was powerful? (Read: well endowed). Wait until you get a load of me." The Israelites made their displeasure with the threat clear by killing the tax collector and forcing Rehoboam to run for his life. * "Don't repay evil for evil. Don't retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will grant you his blessing." (1 Peter 3:9, NLT) The above is clearly not an affront, but I am including it to make an important point. As the Bible says, the best thing to do in the face of someone else's invective is to turn the other cheek and bless the insulter, right? Because killing with kindness in the face of someone else's anger is righteous. It also really infuriates the heck out of the bully. Ancient Roman Epithets Image Credit...Ryan Johnson The renowned philosophers and poets of this era had license to throw more overt barbs back and forth, particularly when it came to criticizing one another's work. Speaking of not taking criticism well, we would be remiss if we didn't mention one of the most hostile "Oh yeah?" insults of the period. The Roman author Catullus's poem "Carmen 16" was a response to two men, Furius and Aurelius, who were going around telling people that Catullus's poetry was soft, a euphemism for effeminate. (This was considered an insult in those days.) Catullus, who had apparently woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, proceeded to let the men know in no uncertain terms that not only had they missed the point of his work, but that he was willing to inflict great bodily harm on them to prove it. The poem opens with a criminal threat that is so filthy and violent that it can't be included here. And, humorously enough, his main point -- after threatening the two men -- was that sometimes softly rendered messages could be more erotic than openly prurient writing. "Carmen 16" is available online for those who are inclined to search for it. Medieval Times Image Credit...Ryan Johnson Liberty with insults and crude language continued to be fairly common in writing that had controversial opinions or critical attacks on people and important institutions. "Perhaps you want me to die of unrelieved boredom while you keep on talking." (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, p. 244 of the compendium "Luther's Works") The above is a fairly tame insult from Martin Luther (1483-1546), the German monk whose "95 Theses" was a catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. Luther was a particularly spicy communicator for a man of the cloth and had some strong opinions on the Catholic Church, as well as just about anyone else who displeased him. Unfortunately, some of those targets included Turks and Jews. His barbs are so well known by theologians that there is even a Martin Luther Insult Generator, where readers can see some of his more vitriolic disses. * "Villain, I have done thy mother." ("Titus Andronicus," William Shakespeare, 1594) Does this one sound familiar? It gladdens the heart to think that even today, people are paraphrasing a literary figure such as Shakespeare, even if just to exert dominance by disparaging the virtues of someone's mom. * In the late 17th century, a gentleman known only as B.E. Gent published a dictionary of a mysterious, underworld language known as cant called, fittingly, "A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew." The linguist Ben Zimmer said in an email that some of his favorite insults came from this dictionary. "There was a wide array of epithets that all roughly meant 'foolish person' to describe the potential victims of thieves," Mr. Zimmer said. He also mentioned some of them in an article for The Times in 2011. The dictionary was written to help the upper classes familiarize themselves with the slang of the pickpockets and thieves in the streets of London, presumably on the theory that knowing what someone meant when they called you an "addle-pate" would keep you from getting mugged. The following is a sampling of all of the ways in which you can call someone an idiot. You can choose any of them, or if you want to simultaneously impress someone and drive your point home, you can use them all. Addle-pate, booberkin, burly-sop, clodpate, clunch, cock-robbin, cod's-head, country-put, dulpickle, jack-adams, jobbernoll, nick-ninny, nigmenog, paper-skul, purple dromedary, sawny, sap-pate, sheep's-head, simkin, sowse-crown and wise man of Gotham. 19th-Century Slander Image Credit...Ryan Johnson The Victorian era in England -- as well as the later Reconstruction period in 19th-century America -- was strongly class-based societies, and what better way to reinforce your own importance relative to others than by calling one another names? Back then, if you got into a collieshangie, or an argument, with someone, you could insult that person in myriad ways. You just had to be careful not to cop a mouse, or wind up with a black eye. Here are five of our favorites: Fart catcher: A valet or servant who walked behind the lord or lady being served. I told you the era was class-based. Foozler: This word comes from the dialectal German "fuseln," meaning "to work badly, clumsily, hurriedly." Thus, a foozler was a clumsy bungler. Hornswoggler: This was the perfect word to use if you wanted to accuse someone of being a fraud. The etymology of this word is mostly unknown, but it has been thought to relate to the "waggling" motion of a steer's head and horns when it was roped by a cowboy. Mutton shunter: You had to be careful with this one. A mutton shunter was an offensive term for a policeman who was tasked with getting prostitutes off the streets, or at least asking them to move along. It was the kind of insult that could earn a bunch of fives (fist) to the blinkers (eyes). Whooperups: These were defined as "inferior, noisy singers," a term that I think should come back, especially at karaoke parties. Contemporary Cuts Image Credit...Ryan Johnson Fun fact: The word "snark" was coined in 1876 as an imaginary animal created by Lewis Carroll in "The Hunting of the Snark." Shortly after 2000, however, it referred to insults as an attitude or expression dripping with mocking irreverence or sarcasm. Image Snark may have started out as an animal from Lewis Carroll's imagination, but it means something very different now.Credit... Google Ngram Viewer * In the early 20th century, Winston Churchill, the British statesman and prime minister, was famous for his witty repartee. The following are a couple of examples. Don't you wish you could think on your feet like Mr. Churchill? Bessie Braddock, M.P.: "Winston, you are drunk, and what's more, you are disgustingly drunk." Churchill: "Bessie, my dear, you are ugly and what's more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly." (International Churchill Society) His exchanges with Nancy Astor -- the first female sitting member of Parliament -- were famous for their biting wit. The best known of these is his apocryphal comeback to a threat made by his rival: Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were married to you I'd put poison in your coffee." Churchill: "Nancy, if I were married to you, I'd drink it." (International Churchill Society) * By the mid-20th century, you could be "cruising for a bruising" if you challenged someone too aggressively, but you could also claim your alone time by rudely telling someone to "make like a tree and leave." * Of course, no one could forget this familial insult from the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Almost 50 years later, it's still quoted when one needs a decent retort about an adversary's lineage. * George Orwell once said, "Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." I am a generation or five away from the apparent TikTok flame wars between millennials and Gen Zers. Should I have been surprised that they had a problem with each other? Probably not. But like most generations, the behavior of one group gets on the nerves of the other. @tavico862332 Millennials vs. Gen Z Slang Battle! Love You So - The King Khan & BBQ Show Brian Moller via TikTok.com So, to recap: Human beings exhibit a wide range of complex feelings, levels of security and moral centers. We still jockey for social status, just as our ancestors did. Perhaps the best way to level that playing field would be to rid ourselves of the notion that putting someone else down in order to lift ourselves up is still necessary in this day and age. Or we could just call each other fart catchers. Whichever works best. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Johnson is an illustrator living in Brooklyn. Deb Amlen, the crossword columnist and senior staff editor of Wordplay, believes that everyone can learn to solve the Times crossword. She is the author of the humor book, "It's Not P.M.S., It's You." @debamlen 19 * Give this article * * * 19 Advertisement Continue reading the main story Site Index Site Information Navigation * (c) 2023 The New York Times Company * NYTCo * Contact Us * Accessibility * Work with us * Advertise * T Brand Studio * Your Ad Choices * Privacy Policy * Terms of Service * Terms of Sale * Site Map * Canada * International * Help * Subscriptions