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January 6, 2012

Strange But True!

Q. Why so much bad-mouthing everywhere these days?

A. If you're thinking of today as “the golden age of insults,” you're overlooking Shakespeare's time, when the Bard himself penned such gems as “knotty-pated fool,” “bull's pizzle,” and “bolting-hutch of beastliness” (to name only three from a single play, “Henry IV, Part I”), says Paul McFedries of IEEE Spectrum magazine. Or consider the 18th century's great Samuel Johnson, who served up such snubs as “lackbrain,” “blunderhead,” “fopdoodle,” and “slubberdegullion,” this last defined by him as “a base, paltry, dirty, sorry wretch.”


 
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