What are your favorite insults? You might have some great words or phrases.

I ask the question because last night I heard a phrase that I love--especially for my oldest daughter. She is warm, sweet, & intelligent--however, she is best described as "high maintenance", to be sure. The insult? Copernicus called, and you're not the center of the universe! Others???

"He moves his lips when he watches TV."

"It takes him an hour and a half to watch '60 Minutes'" (Not sure this is seen overseas. It's a 60-minute long [Duh!] news program which debuted in the mid 1820's and is still going strong.)

When someone presents an argument I consider ridiculous but don't want to bother wasting my time to dispute, "Self-medicating again, are we?"

"Truly a dim bulb" (see later) or "On those few occasions when a light bulb goes on over his head it is, at best, a 10-watter."

True story: While in the military, I once passed over the next-highest person in my shop in selecting a new trainer because, in my humble estimation, she was a complete idiot. When I gave the job to the woman just below her rank because she was totally qualified, I was reamed by my boss for not following military protocol. Apparently you're supposed to choose whomever is next in line regardless of ability, something I fought in this case seeing as how the first woman was truly a dim bulb. When I was asked "Don't you think (name) has the intelligence to be trainer?" I shot back "(Name) doesn't have the intelligence to take tickets at a Tilt-A-Whirl!" which remains, to this day, one of the proudest highlights of my inglorious military career.

(Another aside to our non-US members - I don't know if you have
Tilt-A-Whirls over there [or would the correct pluralization be
"Tilts-A-Whirl?] but they're found in local carnivals and exist primarily for the purpose of making riders dizzy and then emptying their stomachs thereby making more room for more of the fine cuisine which is found at these venues. To run a Tilt-A-Whirl one must possess the intellect, roughly, of a potato and the person taking tickets is that person's assistant!)

I don't recall where I heard this one:
1st person: You must think I'm a perfect fool.
2nd person: Oh, no one's perfect!

Or:
1st person: (attempting to justify his unsuccessful attempts to assist the 2nd) "You know they say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
2nd person: "Well, hit the road!"

And similarly: "You are cordially invited to relocate to the theological place of eternal punishment."

Then again, in those cases when wit fails me, I tend to fall back on the old reliable: "Oh, Bite me!"

Enough already...

Good ones, CJ!
I am sure there is an insult for my stupidity for this.... but I have never quite understood the use of bite me! Is it more than meets the eye?

Perhaps intended as a compliment, but likely to be taken as an insult - young man to young lady at a disco -

"You don't sweat much for a fat lass!"

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Then again, in those cases when wit fails me, I tend to fall back on the old reliable: "Oh, Bite me!"

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Ah, one of my favorites in chat (which is typewritten, not heard) these days is "Byte me!"

Or my favorite, as I posted here!

You ephemeromorph!

They are the lowest form of life imaginable. You might see them blocking the intersection with their car or taking up 3 seats on the subway, while clipping their nails. Now you know what to call them.

I just heard a great one on a show my husband had on TV...

"You are lower than whale dung!"

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Originally posted by FatStan:
"You don't sweat much for a fat lass!"

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Ogden Nash wrote a poem years ago titled Ode to Dear Abby, or something like that. I don't remember much about it, except it was about a young man (high school age, I believe). The last line was the only compliment he could think of to give his girl friend: "You sweat less than any fat girl I know". I read it in a Dear Abby column in the early 60s or, possibly, late 50s. That may not be an exact quote, but it's the best I can do. I would love to find the poem again. Help?

(I'm with C J in that I prefer 60's and 50's, but I'm trying to break that. 60s and 50s look too much like serial numbers to me. Even though they're called serial "numbers", they often contain letters.)

Tinman

[This message was edited by tinman on Wed Dec 18th, 2002 at 19:37.]

100 Things Not to Say During Sex

Note number 4 on the list...

OMG! Arnie, I laughed till I cried! YOMANK!

Yesterday Morgan mentioned the chicken pox elsewhere. But of course, "the pox" used to refer to smallpox, a much more serious disease.

With that in mind, Jonathan Swift turned the greeting "Pax vobiscum" ("Peace be with you") into a curse: Pox vobiscum.

Pox was the subject of what may be the best-ever rejoinder to an insult.

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"Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That, my Lord, depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."-- John Wilkes to The Earl of Sandwich, Parliament, November 1763

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(I've seen it attributed to Disraeli, but suspect that is mistaken. It might be interesting to find out when "pox" came to mean syphilis.)

Since we can now bring up old threads (thanks again, Sarah! ), I heard this insult just today from a friend about someone we both dislike intensely:
A hateful sow-faced harpy!

Never heard that one before, but, boy, is she!

It seems that there is an ongoing spat between the framers of the European proposed Constitution. A newspaper in Germany declared that the Italians have "spaghetti for brains". An Italian minister said that Germans are "arrogant, hypernationalistic blonds." Then the German chancellor cancelled his vacation to Italy. That would show those rude Italians, according to the American report!

The insult-fest started when Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, beginning his term as EU president, likened a German legislator to a Nazi concentration camp guard.

Meanwhile, the report continues, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, "never one to underestimate himself", has compared himself to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

However, in Spain 90% of the people don't know anything about the constitutional convention, and only 1% know its purpose.

Sounds like those Europeans are having fun!

Here's some wonderful invective from Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation of Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, dated 1653:

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The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously, called them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.

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Yes, but they do all sorts of strange things in Europe. We British try to ignore them.

Richard English

Oh, arnie, those insults are great! I am going to keep some of them, like "ninny lobcocks" or "slabberdegullion druggels"!

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We British try to ignore them

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Yes, and I am sure it drives those Europeans crazy!

You must understand that we, in England, are very tolerant people. We do not blame the Europeans for their misfortune in not being born British.

Indeed, ee accept that they have a right to act in strange ways and we don't mind - just so long as they don't expect us to take too much notice of them.

Richard English

Yes, from what I've read the English very much have the attitude of "live and let live." Now, that is refreshing.

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Richard English: We do not blame the Europeans for their misfortune in not being born British.

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Gilbert & Sullivan:

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He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it, / And it's greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!
For he might have been a Roosian, / A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
Or perhaps Itali-an!
But in spite of all temptations / To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman!
He remains an Englishman!

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I think that for the operetta's U.S. production, Gilbert wrote a version satirizing Americans. But I don't find it on-line.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:

Yes, from what I've read the English very much have the attitude of "live and let live." Now, that is refreshing.

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The British, too

Although I suspect it's a British trait, I also suspect that it is strongest among the English.

Certainly I see more evidence of internecine strife in Northern Ireland and some parts of Scotland than I do in England.

Richard English

Probably because in suburbia families haven't been living cheek-by-jowl with the same other families for centuries