17th Century Insults

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant Martha. This is Kurt Basham from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hi, Kurt.

Hi, Kurt. Welcome to the program.

Oh, thanks a lot.

What’s going on?

Well, I was searching online for some obscure or archaic insults.

Well, now, wait a minute. Why?

Everyone’s got to have a hobby, right?

You don’t get out much.

I did say this was Grand Rapids, right?

It’s Grand Rapids.

Are there a lot of people you need to insult in Grand Rapids, or what’s the deal?

Yeah, you don’t know the half of it.

Oh, really?

Oh, tell us.

Are you calling from prison?

Are you calling from the next town over?

Oh, yes.

It was not really Grand Rapids, and my name’s not really Kurt.

I had to disguise my voice and all that.

Anyway, what I found was what could be the motherlode of old-school name-calling,

And I was hoping I could share some of that with you.

Oh, well, sure.

Is it safe for air?

Totally.

Okay.

Go for it.

Rock and roll.

Even better.

All right.

Well, it’s from a translation from a French novel called Gargantua and Pantagruel.

It was written a whole number of years ago in the mid-1500s.

So not exactly beach reading maybe or anything like that.

But anyway, in it there’s a paragraph about the bread sellers and how they call everyone these really rude names.

And then he goes on to list like 40 examples.

And some of the choicer ones are scurvy sneaks bees and grout head gnat snappers.

Oh, yeah.

Nice.

And possibly my favorite, slubberdegullion druggles.

What is a slubberdegullion drubble?

Well, you know, if you told somebody they were a slubberdegullion druggle,

They might not know what you mean, but they probably wouldn’t mistake it for a compliment.

No, not at all.

It turns out, I looked that one up.

It’s a filthy, slobbering person.

Yeah, this particular passage that you’re quoting from is just a work of genius.

And you’re quoting the English translation from the French, right?

Yeah, right.

And so the work of the translator in order to anglicize all these French insults is really just phenomenal.

No matter which translation you get, it must be a great fun to do.

It’s a long passage.

He says, how does it go?

I’m reading here.

Craddling gabblers, licorice gluttons, freckled bitters, mangy rascals, drunken roisters, sly knaves, drowsy lawyers, slap sauce fellows, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues.

He just goes on and on.

This is fantastic.

And most of these are safe.

I’ve left a few out that we can’t actually say on the air.

There’s a few.

There’s maybe three or four that are not really repeatable on the air.

But we can say turdy gut, right?

Why not?

You just did.

Amongst friends, why not?

Amongst friends.

Yeah, and the gaping changelings.

I don’t even know where to begin with that one.

Gaping changelings.

Yeah, I don’t know.

And Dottie Paul jolt heads really sounded strange, too.

Dottie Pauls?

But we’ll put this whole passage, naughty words and all, online so everyone else can share in the joy.

These are the kind of things that probably most of them would get past Internet filters as well, right?

I would think so.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

So, Kurt, do you feel that we’ve lost the fine art then of coming up?

Well, yeah.

I mean, I don’t think anything close to this exists today, you know.

So I was quite taken with some of these in here.

Well, we can make our own.

I mean, these seem to be Nazi coinages anyway.

The translator made these up probably himself.

I think we’ve lost some of the poetry, though.

I mean, you just don’t have a prattling gabblers anymore.

Well, on our show, you do.

No question.

Now there are three of us. Welcome, Kurt.

Yes, thanks. I’m proud to be a prattling gambler.

Well, Kurt, are you looking for more?

Because weirdly enough, recently for my birthday, somebody gave me a box of long-lost insults.

Oh, nice.

A box?

Yeah, they’re on all these little cards with these cute illustrations.

I’m not sure what the appeal of having a whole bunch of cards with insults on them is,

But it’s Forgotten English 3, long-lost insults.

And my favorites here are Fustilugs, which is an ill-natured person,

And Nyargle, N-Y-A-R-G-L-E, which means a foolish person fond of disrupting.

You like that, Nyargle?

I’m going to try and use that in conversation.

It sounds like a word J.K. Rowling used.

It does, doesn’t it?

Yeah.

Or a high school football team fighting nyarcles.

Anyway, well, Kurt, thank you for bringing this to our attention.

We will definitely link to that list of interesting insults.

Thank you.

Thanks, Kurt.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

No parting insult for us?

You flutch calf lolly.

Now, wait a minute.

That one’s for Grant.

You three-eyed, yellow-bellied, lily-livered polecat.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Well, there’s a passage I want to share with you.

I won’t read the whole thing, but it’s from a 1916 book by George Albert Nicholson.

And he’s listing words in English that have E-O-N or O-N on the end of them.

And interestingly, some of them are insults, like celebrity gullion is in there.

And some of them are not insults, but they all sound like insults.

There’s something about that suffix.

So it’s Merjan, Curmudjan, Rampaljan, Runjan, Flaverdigudjan, Flabergoljan, Pancjan, Ramboljan, Gulljan, Caljan, Hunchjan, Hutterjan, Gruljan, Dualan, Doljan, Dualjan, Dualjan, Lynjan, Mungjan, Naljan, Nampjan, Punjan, Ramolishkwan, Rampejan.

Don’t they all sound like insults?

They do.

Most of them are dialect English words that have since fallen out of use, but it’s a fun list.

I’ll share that one online as well.

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