For F*'s Sake
The ancient, cathartic art of the insult
RUDE WORDS
While we celebrate the potential passing of the Presidential torch from an older to younger generation, I’m happy to admit that several of the most engaging topics I’ve explored here come from my teen daughter. Once she asked me to research the derivation of the “Bee’s Knees” expression that had us cracking up in the car. And just last week, she reminded me of the insulting gesture in Shakespeare plays of flicking your thumb out from your top teeth. No one beats Shakespeare for creative cursing, except perhaps Monty Python.
Inspired to get into this topic tout de suite and swear my head off in fantastical fashion, I was delighted to discover that the work of “research” might require watching a Netflix series hosted by Nicolas Cage. The 2021 “History of Swear Words,” features the episodes F**k, Sh*t, Bitch, D**k, Pu**y, Damn. (I find that list and its ellipses funny in and of itself. Who decides which letters get bleeped; what’s the rule here about asterisking?)
Each episode was a quick 20 minutes long and full of comedians like Sarah Silverman riffing on their favorite expletives, so I easily binged all six in one sweary, sweaty evening.
The R-rated F word seems to be everyone’s favorite as it’s so endlessly versatile, conveying delight or rage, admiration or primal desire. It began with the medieval Dutch for “blow, hit, strike,” and by the 1200s got mixed up with the carnal where it has mainly stayed since—literally meaning sex, while other meanings play with metaphorical leaps from there.
The S word, fine for PG-13, since the Anglo-Saxons of 400 AD starting using this for excrement, and not in any way deemed wrong. There wasn’t plumbing or privacy; poop was just a normal part of everyday life—a communal experience even. It’s when we develop privacy around the act, that shame follows and the word becomes tarnished with a dirtier status. I enjoyed the story of the shit-ships that traversed the oceans in the 1800s transporting manure to America—the cargo had to be stored higher up so it wouldn’t get so full of methane below deck that the whole operation would combust into flames. I also found it fascinating, as did the comedians who were bravely game to submerge their hands in ice water for as long as they could stand it, that studies show if you swear you can tolerate pain longer. (Witness a screaming lady during childbirth and she very likely will be employing some foul language, or on a diurnal level, anyone stubbing their toe). Also, along with the natural primordial pain relief, there’s the pleasure of cursing—a cathartic release.
Enter the P word, which began as a cat in the early 1500s and soon morphed into an term of affection for women, later getting all mixed up with vagina. The comedians—in the vein of the Vagina Monologues—rattle off plenty of other words for the female privates from “honeypot” and “hoo-ha” to my new personal favorite, “Cecily Bumtrinket.” And here we Cat Ladies are, ready to recycle our old pink Pussy hats depending on the outcome in November. Most of these old swear words kicking around in our times have been converted and reclaimed to be something—when used by those once negatively targeted—approaching empowerment.
D is for damn which deserves no punishing omissions since it’s always been bound up with condemned and damnation, words of the Church, the only curse in the Bible. Gone with the Wind famously ends with “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” which the filmmakers had to fight for to stay true to the spirt of the novel. Somewhere along the way, more precisely 1781, the word showed up in text softened as “darn.” There are all the lesser swears we can play with freely no matter your age or setting: shucks, gosh, flip, crap, dang, dagnabbit.
The B word derives from bicce for female dog circa 1000 AD and even I enjoyed making a dictionary entry for school once with the definition for “bitch” with a dog illustration. By 1400 AD, this term could be applied to women with a derogatory connotation (think dogs in heat) and over time will be used against our species for being loud, uncontrollable, wanting to vote, or watch us: winning the Presidency.
Finally the anatomical D word which no man wants as a nickname since Tricky Dick Nixon, but it was indeed only a short name for Richard as early as the 1500s, later becoming a word for “everyman,” eventually slang for a sexual partner, then in the 1860s a riding whip, and somehow becoming the word for the sex part itself, reaching its zenith perhaps as the SNL skit gifting a “dick in a box.”
TAUNTING GESTURES
Apparently this penis pervades cursing gestures too, as the middle finger might be considered a stand-in for the phallus.
“The Romans had their own name for it: digitus impudicus—the shameless, indecent or offensive finger,” according to this article on flipping the bird from the BBC:
“It’s one of the most ancient insult gestures known,” says anthropologist Desmond Morris.
“The middle finger is the penis and the curled fingers on either side are the testicles. By doing it, you are offering someone a phallic gesture. It is saying, ‘this is a phallus’ that you're offering to people, which is a very primeval display.”
The French have their own phallic salute, says Dr. Morris.
In performing the “bras d’honneur” (arm of honour), one raises the forearm with the back of the hand facing outward, while slapping or gripping the inside of the elbow with the other hand.
The British gesture—the two-fingered “v” with the palm facing inward—is a “double phallus,” Dr. Morris quips.
Now giving someone the finger seems to be less penis-intended and more democratic displeasure for all, as it’s used pretty widely for all kinds of infractions.
Another version of this involves the thumb and teeth. In Romeo and Juliet, there’s a whole thumb-biting exchange that starts with Sampson saying,
Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.
In the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues, Sampson instigates a fight by flipping someone off with this gesture of placing a thumb behind the front top teeth and flicking it out. Sampson and Gregory vs. Abraham and Benvolio banter back and forth until it quickly escalates into an actual fight with swords (and citizens joining with clubs), so I guess that was a successful instigation and sufficiently phallic in all the usual ways.
INSULT GENERATION
My older brother introduced me in my youth to Led Zeppelin and coinciding with that: British comedy troupe Monty Python. He had the printed script for the Holy Grail and we recited it enough to have it memorized. The Brits, I learned young, are the insult champions.
A sampling of lines from Monty Python movies:
Your mother was a hamster!
And your father smelled of elderberries
I fart in your general direction
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
Shut your festering gob, you tit!
Your type makes me puke!
You vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous pervert!
You don’t frighten us with your silly knees-bent running around advancing behavior!
You and all your silly English Kaaaaaaaniggets!
English pig dog!
Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of silly persons!
I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper
I burst my pimples at you and call your door-opening request a silly thing
Yellow bastard! I’ll bite your legs off!
Come on, ya pansy
Illegitimate-faced bugger-folk!
You tiny-brained wiper of other people’s bottoms!
Your highness, when I said that you are like a stream of bat’s piss, I only mean that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around it is dark!
It’s not a balloon you stupid, thick headed Saxon git... It’s not a balloon...! Balloons is for kiddie winkies...if you want to play with balloons, get outside!
You’re one of the most boring, tedious, monotonous, cloth-eared, flatulent, swivel-eyed, fornicating little gits I’ve ever laid my eyes on!
And nothing could be finer than the original dirty-mouth genius himself. The Shakespeare quotes are endless and surely infected the minds of the Monty Python crew, but here’s just a few of the things that got the plebians in the pit rolling that taunt us to this day.
From Shakespeare:
Sell while you can, you are not for all markets.
Villain, I have done thy mother.
Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life.
Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus of hindering knotgrass made, You bead, you acorn!
Thou art violently carried away from grace: there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man; a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villany? wherein villanous, but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing?
A pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!
Thou cream-faced loon!
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things.
Lump of foul deformity
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch
Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
My wife’s a hobby-horse!
You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.
Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.
If that’s not enough, you can make your own word salads with numerous online Insult Generators. Like this one, just blurted out for me when prompted, in Shakespeare-style, for our friend JD Vance:
Hark! ’Tis JD Vance, a knave most vile, Who mocks fair cat dames with speech so futile. In lewd repose upon his couch he lay, A fool’s delight, a jester’s holiday!
Or in the vein of Python, it writes:
Ah, JD Vance, you insipid knob of a man, I’ve seen more wit in a cat lady’s furball collection! You, who doth engage in lewd acts with your own furniture, are as useful as a teapot made of cheese in a rainstorm!
I feel better already.
Oh interesting about Dam! Tricky biz this bitching!
So that's why my parents never let me watch Monty Python!
And the Nicholas Cage series is now on our Netflix watchlist, thanks for the recommendation!