A.Word.A.Day --nithing

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Apr 14, 2025

This week’s theme
Insults

This week’s words
nithing
barbermonger

A nithing pole, in fiction (video, 3 min)
Norsemen TV series

A nithing pole, for real (video, 1 min)
Norwegian politician & anarchist Øystein Meier Johannessen

Previous week’s theme
Toponyms

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

I dream of a world without war. I know, I ask too much. Maybe I can dream of a world in which people fight with words instead of swords (or their modern equivalent).

In my fantasy, battles are fought not with bombs but barbs. Each side lines up its choicest vocabulary, ready to sling some serious shade. Anything goes. Four-letter fusillades. Eight-syllable juggernauts. Insults that smite ancestors, mock gods, diss their dog, and question their taste in music.

Nothing is sacred.

I’m in the word business, so I may be a little biased here, but I believe it’s better than dropping bombs on hospitals. I believe it’s better than kids growing up with the trauma of living in a war zone. It’s better than people having to learn to live with one or more missing limbs.

If we must go to battle, I’ll supply you with the ammunition. I’ve got words, a whole arsenal.

Words sharp as stilettos and blunt as frying pans.
Words Shakespeare used to verbally slap people across the face.
Words that just last Tue, someone coined while half-drunk in a dive bar.

This week we’ll serve up five insults. Think of them as renewable verbal energy. Sling ‘em again and again. They don’t run out, though they might dull with overuse. And then I’ll be standing by with a fresh batch, forged in the fire of etymological mischief.

nithing

PRONUNCIATION:

(NY-thing, second syllable as in clothing)

MEANING:

noun:	1. A coward.
	2. An outlaw.
	3. A miser.
adjective:	1. Cowardly.
	2. Treacherous.
	3. Miserly.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old English nithing, from Old Norse nidhingr, from nidh (scorn). Earliest documented use: before 1150. See also, niddering.

NOTES:

Back in the day, if someone called you a nithing, they weren’t inviting you to tea. They were challenging your honor, your bravery, and your generosity, all in one fell swoop.

In Viking culture they have something called a nithing pole in which one mounts a horse’s head on a pole and plants it outside a scorned person’s house as a magical middle finger. All I have to say is: leave the horse out of it.

USAGE:

“Surely there must be one among this crowd of nithings who has the guts to face a woman in combat?”
Joanna Fulford; Surrender To The Viking; Mills & Boon Historical; 2014.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity. -Arnold Toynbee, historian (14 Apr 1889-1975)

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