Friday, February 25, 2005
Of knaves and guttersnipes.....
There was an entry in sol's journal that I wanted to address, because I wholeheartedly agree and wanted to add a reply. Rather than have you hunt for this gem, I have copied it here. Enjoy; my reply follows:
"The Snivelling Milksop's Guide to Insults.
Tuesday January 11, @11:16AM
Language has been much abused in recent years, most particularly by those who would like us to use less of it, and therefore cheerfully eliminate words from what is permitted in public speech.
Personally, I look upon this as a challenge, a cheerful reminder that our current crudity is merely a more direct means to what we've been alluding to for years in more oblique, and possibly even more insulting, terms. Though directness carries the implication that more words might be more difficulty for the addled and sorely worn brain of the recipient (though we cannot usually, alas, refer to that instrument as being over-used) there is a certain ring to the use of the well-played parry in today's world of semi-automatic insults.
I promise you, the day that you refer to someone of lesser vocabulary skills as a snivelling milksop, they'll rue the day that they had to refer to the unabridged just to find out they'd been insulted!
My mum once referred jokingly to co-workers as 'riff-raff,' and they went and looked it up and it caused an HR incident.
Calling someone a hirsute, gluttonous troglodyte won me a vocabulary merit badge among my family.
For those less lexicographically inclined, certainly there are crude phrases which may be forged, and among us dwell several masters of this art (i refer you to our dear friend, Mr. SamtheButcher, who truly put the F in FSoF) but i must confess, give me a good, sound Dickensian insult any day.
"You, there! Yes, you, you uncouth cabbage leaf, dweller of dank alleys! You snivelling cur! Fetch me my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary at once!
What? Too heavy? Use a wheelbarrow if you must, you witless, hapless child of the mud!"
C'mon, drag out your Dickens, let's hear whatcha got!
(for targets, may i suggest either the broken, unburnished lamps that are the FCC, or the hand-wringing, pallid monstrosities that are in charge of our Cable Conglomerates?)"
Let me just start by saying my favorite word is facetious. I learned it at the age of 5, and it has never ceased to hold a certain charm for me. It's even better than pulchritude.
This is what happens when your daddy goes to college and gets his degree in English while you are learning the language firsthand as a tot. And then you go on to get your own college degree in English. And start using words like fey and shouting "Hie thee hence!" to startled passersby.
The only thing about being ill that is worse than the fatigue is the loss of cognitive function. My vocabulary seems less than half of what it was eight years ago. I have descended into verbal ineptitude quite against my will.
I have not forgotten, however, that delicious word guttersnipe and how aptly it describes many modern divas.
The best string of insults in recent memory appeared in the song, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" sung by Thurl Ravenscroft. No profanity, no obscure meanings, but great stuff nevertheless. Because we all know that the Grinch stink, stank, stunk.
I do love Dickens. So many of us could identify with his descriptions of childhood poverty, no matter whether or not we ourselves were ever impoverished. And such a vivid portrait painted of Ebenezer Scrooge, indelible.
But for the penultimate insult of all time, I've got to go back to Shakespeare. I have to admit my fibrofogged brain couldn't locate it immediately because I had forgotten it was in "King Lear". But I found it, marked by brackets in my college textbook:
"A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, 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 mungril bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deni'st the least syllable of thy addition."
Music to mine ears!
Hie thee hence!
"The Snivelling Milksop's Guide to Insults.
Tuesday January 11, @11:16AM
Language has been much abused in recent years, most particularly by those who would like us to use less of it, and therefore cheerfully eliminate words from what is permitted in public speech.
Personally, I look upon this as a challenge, a cheerful reminder that our current crudity is merely a more direct means to what we've been alluding to for years in more oblique, and possibly even more insulting, terms. Though directness carries the implication that more words might be more difficulty for the addled and sorely worn brain of the recipient (though we cannot usually, alas, refer to that instrument as being over-used) there is a certain ring to the use of the well-played parry in today's world of semi-automatic insults.
I promise you, the day that you refer to someone of lesser vocabulary skills as a snivelling milksop, they'll rue the day that they had to refer to the unabridged just to find out they'd been insulted!
My mum once referred jokingly to co-workers as 'riff-raff,' and they went and looked it up and it caused an HR incident.
Calling someone a hirsute, gluttonous troglodyte won me a vocabulary merit badge among my family.
For those less lexicographically inclined, certainly there are crude phrases which may be forged, and among us dwell several masters of this art (i refer you to our dear friend, Mr. SamtheButcher, who truly put the F in FSoF) but i must confess, give me a good, sound Dickensian insult any day.
"You, there! Yes, you, you uncouth cabbage leaf, dweller of dank alleys! You snivelling cur! Fetch me my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary at once!
What? Too heavy? Use a wheelbarrow if you must, you witless, hapless child of the mud!"
C'mon, drag out your Dickens, let's hear whatcha got!
(for targets, may i suggest either the broken, unburnished lamps that are the FCC, or the hand-wringing, pallid monstrosities that are in charge of our Cable Conglomerates?)"
Let me just start by saying my favorite word is facetious. I learned it at the age of 5, and it has never ceased to hold a certain charm for me. It's even better than pulchritude.
This is what happens when your daddy goes to college and gets his degree in English while you are learning the language firsthand as a tot. And then you go on to get your own college degree in English. And start using words like fey and shouting "Hie thee hence!" to startled passersby.
The only thing about being ill that is worse than the fatigue is the loss of cognitive function. My vocabulary seems less than half of what it was eight years ago. I have descended into verbal ineptitude quite against my will.
I have not forgotten, however, that delicious word guttersnipe and how aptly it describes many modern divas.
The best string of insults in recent memory appeared in the song, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" sung by Thurl Ravenscroft. No profanity, no obscure meanings, but great stuff nevertheless. Because we all know that the Grinch stink, stank, stunk.
I do love Dickens. So many of us could identify with his descriptions of childhood poverty, no matter whether or not we ourselves were ever impoverished. And such a vivid portrait painted of Ebenezer Scrooge, indelible.
But for the penultimate insult of all time, I've got to go back to Shakespeare. I have to admit my fibrofogged brain couldn't locate it immediately because I had forgotten it was in "King Lear". But I found it, marked by brackets in my college textbook:
"A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, 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 mungril bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deni'st the least syllable of thy addition."
Music to mine ears!
Hie thee hence!
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