Why, you @#$%!
Recently, I read an Associated Press article that dealt with the value of swearing. Specifically, the health benefits of swearing during this world-wide, social distancing time. Citing a couple of mental-health experts, the article described how swearing increases our ability to deal with pain. Swearing is especially helpful if it keeps us from following through with an action that would cause harm to ourselves or others. This was old news to me. For those who don’t know, which will be pretty much almost everyone reading this column, as an undergraduate I majored in Communication and in the course of my studies I wrote a lengthy paper on the benefits of emitting healthy, if somewhat unsavory, oaths.
That was many years ago, and a good number of the taboo words—words I wouldn’t have dreamt of uttering in front of my mother—can now be heard regularly on commercial television. We can chuckle that producer David Selznick paid a $5,000 fine because Clark Gable said the word “damn” at the end of Gone With the Wind, but the motion picture industry enforced its rules in 1939 (well, usually). Today, that word hardly raises an eyebrow and far earthier words are de rigueur in today’s movies.
The problem I have with how we express ourselves through so-called objectionable language is that it’s just so unimaginative. Instead of throwing a scatological term at someone who has offended you, I recommend you yield to using insults penned by the Bard:
“I’ll beat thee, but I would infect my hands.”
“Poisonous bunch-backed toad! “
“That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey Iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?” (Now that’s what I want to yell the next time I hit my thumb with a hammer!)
Shakespeare wasn’t the first to introduce harsh insults into the lexicon. We can thank the Ancient Romans for contributing not just profane remarks, but doing so through graffiti. Archeologists have reported such inscriptions on ruins as”
“Philiros spado” (“Phileros is a eunuch”)
“Oppi, emboliari, fur, furuncle” (“Oppius, you’re a clown, a thief, and a cheap crook”)
And this gem, found on the wall of what had been an inn:
“Miximus in lecto. Faetor, peccavimus, hospes. Si dices: quare? Nulla matella fuit” (“We have wet the bed. I admit, we were wrong, my host. If you ask ‘why?’ There was no chamber pot”)
For me, however, absolutely the best affronts are found in historical ethnicities—colorful insults from past generations–and rarely go to the level of the obscene because they don’t need to. I submit the following for your consideration (and good luck trying to correctly pronounce some of these):
“Mortacci tua!” (Italian: “Your feeble ancestors!”)
“Słoń nastąpił ci na ucho?” (Polish: “Did an elephant stomp on your ear?”)
“Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy!” (Polish: “Not my circus, not my monkeys!”–I always wondered where this one came from.)
“Wie boter op zijn hoofd heeft, moet uit de zon blijven.” (Dutch: “If you have butter on your head, you should stay out of the sun.”)
“Nuair a rugadh tú bhí tú chomh gránna, mhaolaigh an bhanaltra do mháthair.” (Irish: “When you were born you were so ugly the nurse slapped your mother.”)
“Shēng gè chāshāo dōu hǎoguò shēng nǐ!” (Chinese: “It would be better to have given birth to a piece of barbecue pork instead of you!”)
“Ej bekot!” (Latvian: “Go pick mushrooms!”)
“Khot’ kol na golove teshi!” (Russian: “You can sharpen an ax on top of this head!”)
And, finally, a few from Yiddish I still can hear my maternal grandmother saying–usually to my father:
“Lakhn zol er mit yashtherkes.” (“He should laugh with lizards.”)
“Krugn zol er di Niu Yark brokh.” (“He should get the New York hernia.”)
“Ale tseyn zoln bay im aroysfaln, not eyner zol im blaybn oyf tsonveytung!” (“All his teeth should fall out except one to make him suffer!”)
“Zol er aropshlingen a shirem un s’zol zikh im efenen in boykh!” (“May he swallow an umbrella and may it open in his belly!”)
I’d list some of my father’s rejoinders, but I like you people too much.
Here is this week’s Street Advertising Smile:
