For as long as people have been speaking the English language they have poked fun. Dig deep in the grab bag of insults language has bequeathed through history and discover where these terms were born.
1. Wazzock
Wazzock was a prevalent and loutish insult in the 1990s. At that time, "lad culture" dominated British music and television and wazzock, a North-England accented contraction of the sarcastic wiseacre (a know-it-all) became a powerful tool to shoot people down in argument.
2. Lummox
Though the etymology of lummox is heavily disputed, it
is certain: it came from East Anglia, the coastal outcrop of Britain above London. Around 1825 someone used the word as an insult and it stuck, becoming a typical British go-to term. Some linguists believe it comes from the verb
lummock, which typified a clumsy oaf.
3. Skiver
Skivers and shirkers are the same. Someone who manages to duck out of any responsibility and loaf around, doing very little, is a skiver. The origins of this insult are contested: some think
from an Old Norse word—
skifa to mean “slice,” when the worker slices off as much work as possible.
4. Minger
Often hurled at the opposite sex, to call someone a minger is to call them objectively unattractive. Though etymologists struggle to agree where the word came from, it seems likely it
stems from the Old Scots word meng, meaning “shit.”
5. Nincompoop
For such a colloquial word, nincompoop actually has a learned past. Samuel Johnson, the compiler of England’s first proper dictionary, claims the word comes from the Latin phrase non compos mentis (“not of right mind”), originally a legal term.
6. Pillock
As words become used regularly, laziness in pronunciation often warps them slightly and so it was with pillock. Originally
pillicock (a Norwegian slang word for penis), the word has been condensed to plain old pillock although its meaning remains.
7. Clod hopper
According to the brilliant Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, dating to 1811 and compiled by Captain Francis Grose, a clod hopper refers to a country farmer or ploughman with the implication today that you are slow witted and bumbling.
8. Dunaker
Grose’s Dictionary of vulgarities is a rich seam of overlooked insults. In 200 years since it was published, there have been several terms that have fallen out of favor. One of them is dunaker - a common thief of cows and calves.
9. Git
By calling someone a git, you are invoking the
old Scots word get, which means "bastard." When it came down south of the border, it lost its harsh vowel sound and became softer, albeit with the required spikiness in.
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