While watching a 1937 Yiddish film ("Green fields") at lunchtime today, as you do, I was intrigued by the following insult: "Your father has flies in his nose."
Any others to share?
My dear paulb, you may--no, WE may!--be sorry you started this!
I'll give you a golden oldie: yer mother wears Army boots.
Don't let the door hit you on your "rs" on the way out.
yer mother wears Army boots
This one is really, really old. Graffito found in the remains of Pompeii: Mater tua caligata est
Re: Flies in your nose.
Geezil, the shoe gobbler, one of the characters in the old Thimble Theater (AKA Popeye) comic strip, who hated (J. Wellington) Wimpy to pieces, used to refer to Wimpy as "flies in my soup", among other things.
His elevator doesn't go to the top.
He's got bats in his belfry.
He flew over the cuckoo's nest and he ain't ever coming back.
He's one brick short of a load.
The lights are on but nobody's home.
His recorder is stuck on pause.
He's one carrot shy of a vegetable patch.
And just to carry on with the "mother" theme ...
"Your mother sold herself to strangers"
the riposte to which was
"Strangers wouldn't buy your mother".
Russian, I think, or at least somewhere east of Britain. Ain't life grand?
Reading the Italy news reminded me that the Italians' favorite insult, va fare in culo, often shortened to fangool, which is the equivalent of our English invitation to go and perform an anatomically difficult act, is, more often than not, expressed not verbally but with one of three different gestures:
1. The most familiar one, striking the left arm just above the elbow with the palm of the right hand, the left arm at a 90-degree angle and elevated, the left fist loosely clenched.
2. The most ancient, known as "il fico" (the fig), made by folding down the fingers of the hand over the palm, the thumb inserted between the first and second fingers so that it protrudes through the first finger which will be wrapped around it. This is mentioned in Dante's Inferno.
3. With the right hand clenched loosely in a fist, the thumb sticking up on the outside, flick the thumb against the underside of the top front teeth in someone's direction. This is portrayed in the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet, where the respective retinues of the Capulets and the Montagues are trying to provoke a fight in the square. You have the dialogue, "Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?" "I do bite my thumb, sir."
(shhhhh. I think I saw a fig.) In Mexico, if you fold down the middle three fingers and bounce your hand in an upward motion, backside out, you are signaling a macho insult that means your wife was unfaithful. If you add to that the word "mocos" in a jeering tone, it's even worse. Don't ask me why, it's just slang for snot.
He's as much use as:
- a chocolate teapot
- an ashtray on a motorbike
She's as welcome as:
- a fart in a spacesuit
- a pork pie at a Jewish wedding
or ffanculo... it is sooooooo strong that I am blushing while writing...
In any case, it is the most common insult between drivers.
which is so common in NY (because most don't know what it means, except it is rude..) Italian still commonly spoken in many parts of the city, and in the 50's and 60's, many top ten hits on the radio where in italian. the most common way to say it fun goo la with the last a really a very soft schwa. the c is definately a g as is a babies babble "goo goo" .
my own italian is limited to things like salami, provolone, pasta, pesto, romano, ravioli, bueno, biscotti, panne, minestrone, zoupe englasia, mange.. but this is not a food thread, this is not a food thread, not a food thread
You would expect Italian to be commonplace in a city whose mayor is named Giuliani and who was just made a Grand Plenipotent Poohbah Commander of the Exalted Meritorious* Order of the Cherubim, or something like that, by the President of Italy.
*I accidentally typed that
meretricious. Those Freudian slips
PS- Aenigma thinks
meretricious should be
merge. Seems to have its own Freudian (or maybe Kinsyesque) hangups.
More on nosesI never knew Jimmy Durante was a moron.
no surprise that it is pronounced as fangul.. this sounds to me as a very southern dialect pronounciation.
"Insults" could be a very long thread. Seeing how much this Board produced in the "as cold as" thread, I imagine we could come up with at least a dozen top-notch zingers in each of these categories:
as cheap as ... [Tighter than a gnat's ass. If he had flu he wouldn't give you a sneeze.]
as ugly as ... [a mud fence. You look like a professional blind date.]
as dumb as ... [You couldn't find your rear end if it was on fire] A huge category
as useless as ... [tits on a boar hog]
as immoral as ... [loose as a buck of soot]
as angry as ...
as nasty as ... [a two-stingered wasp] [meaner than turkey-turd beer]
as stubborn as ... [so stubborn they call him old iron-ass]
as poor as ...
as old as ... [He's older than dirt. He was a waiter at the Last Supper]
as messy as ... [look like you were chawin' tecabby and spit upwind. like you threw your clothes in the air and ran under them.]
as drunk as ...
as crooked as ... [a dog's hind leg. So crooked he could hide behind a corkscrew]
as dishonorable as ... [so low you have to look up to see hell. lower than a snake's belly.]
as brassy as ... [She has more nerve than a toothache.]
as talkative as ... [Your tongue wags at both ends. She speaks at 140 words per minute, with gusts up to 160]
not to mention the various insults to body-size and shape.
Source: The above insults are culled from a collection of regionalisms, Like we Say Back Home by Dick Syatt.
It may or may not be of interest to know that in Indonesian sy is pronounced as we pronounce sh.
Bingley
Just back from screening a 1929 silent film (Douglas Fairbanks in "The iron mask") which included the following intertitle:
"You dolt! You bungler! You marplot! … "
I hadn't heard the word "marplot" before -- it means exactly what it says: "A person who spoils a plot or hinders the success of any undertaking." [18th century English -- SOED]
I assume it was the English translation of a similar French word (in Dumas's novel), but was it in use in 1929?
There is also an old, rarely used word "marfeast", which is what it sounds like, now replaced by the much less elegant "party pooper" or sometimes by "spoilsport".
I'm particularly fond of Shakesperian insults. Here's a link to an old thread:
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=4262In the same thread is tsuwm's abecedarian insult:
"Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xyloocephalous, yirning, zoophyte!"
Not an insult, but a rather funny story. Well, I thought it was funny, anyway.
Once when the CEO and my general manager turned up at my desk unexpectedly and not looking happy, I said "When troubles come, they come not in single spies but in battalions". They gave a me a funny look and then went on. Turned out one of my customers had died and had I known about it? Well, no, I hadn't. Another damned funeral.
The next day the CEO, who has an MBA from Harvard but who has little real learning, came back and said that he'd thought I was insulting him, and mentioned it to his wife that night. She said "From Hamlet by Shakespeare" and explained what it meant.
My stocks around the place went up overnight ...
Whadda they teach 'em at Harvard, anyway?