Foul-Mouth Friday: Creative cursing

[ariestess]

Yes, boys and girls, it's that time again! Foul-mouth Friday!

This week, we're going to be looking at creative cursing. No, this isn't the fun and creative stuff that we discussed last week about Shakespearean cursing. This week, we're going to look into the idea of taking curse words and smashing them together or otherwise changing them to make new words. We'll also be looking at the creative use of words already in the English language for cursing purposes.
[With examples from Leverage & Christopher Titus' Love is Evol]

When it all boils down to the essence, this is pretty simple: creative ways of swearing, whether using actual curse words or not. Going a little more formally, we're also going to look at portmanteaus for swearing -- in other words, a combination of two or more words that blends the meanings of both words into a new word. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

The most common of these creative curses tend to have stock curse words in them, particularly shit and fuck. The vast majority of these imply some level of stupidity.

Some of the shit variants have already been discussed very succinctly by aqua_crescent over here, but we're looking at things like shithead, dipshit, shitfaced, and that ilk.

"What kind of shithead would go out and get shitfaced the night before a major heist?" Eliot asked, staring at Hardison.

Looking to creative variations of fuck, which lady_ganesh covered over here, we mostly find things like fuckface, fucktard, bumblefuck, etc.

One of the more common of these around the internet, fucktard, commonly used to blend the phrase "fucking retard," indicates extreme willful stupidity, often with the intent to do harm. Similar terms include asshat and asshole, for the Americans, or arsehole, for the Brits.

Tara rolled her eyes and fought the urge to cuff Hardison upside the head for his constantly muttered, "Only a fucktard'd diss a brother like that," aimed squarely at Eliot.

Another commonly used and modified term is douchebag. Urban Dictionary's first definition of this word is "An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intellegence [sic], behaving ridiculously in front of colleagues with no sense of how moronic he appears." Some of its more common variants are douchenozzle and douchecanoe. In his show Love is Evol, Christopher Titus explains what he calls "The Douchebag Test."

All men have a douchebag test. It's pretty much the same across... I mean, because we can get along with any guys. If a guy walks up... Say a guy walks up and he's wearing the goofiest shoes you've ever seen, Crocs, maybe. And he has a tie on. But if you're supposed to hang out with the guy for a family dinner, and he walks up, and you go, "Dude, what's with the shoes?" If he goes, "These are my favorite shoes"? Douchebag! But if he goes, "These shoes? Well I'm going to wear them as long as you wear that shirt." Brother! That's the douchebag test.

Some of these words are further compounded by adding -ery to the end: asshattery, fucktardery.

"What kind of asshattery are you boys engaging in?" Tara demands, glaring at Eliot and Hardison. "Can you not simply apologize and get over it?"

And finally, there are the creative curses including genitalia. These are those fun words like dickhead, asshole, twatwaffle, pussy boy, pussy whipped, cock blocked, etc. These phrases can get quite explicit, and there are people who will not tolerate them at all.

"What the hell, Hardison?" Eliot demanded, shoving the other man. "You already got Parker, you don't need to be cock blocking me from getting a little."

In the end, basically you can combine a current swear word with almost any other word to create a new word to use. Even fucktards and asshats know how to do it.




Resources:

• portmanteau @ Wikipedia
  
• portmanteau @ World English Dictionary
  
• portmanteau @ Oxford Dictionaries
  
• fucktard @ Urban Dictionary
  
• fucktard @ Wiktionary
  
• douchebag @ Urban Dictionary
  

Comments

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

If I may address the "fucktard" and other forms of the word "Retarded" when used as an insult and not a medical state:

http://www.r-word.org/r-word-not-acceptable-psa.aspx

Using this term in context with "retard" is becoming unacceptable. I realize many folks love to use it, but they may not be aware of the campaign to end it and why. It is similar to "That's so gay" being an insult. My mentally delayed relative and other mentally delayed people do not exist to serve as an insult to non-mentally delayed persons.

[lmichelle599.livejournal.com]

I thought cockblocked was one word.

[ariestess]

I've seen it both ways, so flipped a coin when I wrote this.

[theemdash]

We certainly don't intend to promote the usage of that word as an insult and in the context of this article are merely reporting a current slang usage of a combination of words. I sincerely hope that this word (and others) fall out of usage so I, and other grammarians, no longer have to track their slang usage.

Thanks for the link and I hope others take a look at it and think twice before uttering that insult again.

[jedishampoo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the article! Just wanted to point out that the links within the article are to fandomgrammarians and not to a public comm, so we can't read the entries if we are not members and it is a closed comm? :)

[ariestess]

Ack! Sorry about that! Have fixed them now...