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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] thread
My personal favourite is wankbreath. It doesn't even make sense, but the first time you hear it you can't help but consider what it could mean.
I like where you’re going with this but I’ll have to overrule. After careful analysis I decided wankpuffin is the clear winner.
Am I reading the chart correctly that 'dickpuffin' appears exactly once in the coda?
yeah this is too good to be a hapax logomenon
It's up to dickpuffins like me to make sure it isn't a hapax logomenon.
actually sorry to be pedantic but it's legomenon not logomenon, it's a participle of the verb λέγω, "to say", not λόγος (reason), which I'm assuming explains the mistake.
thanks for the correction, i had a feeling it was slightly wrong
I really really like the most unused insults on that chart. Scumwit. Trumpnozzle, Wankclown
No dicksmack, lame.
that would be one heck of a dicksmack if you ended up lame afterwards.
I like that Trump is a pejorative.
It's not specifically, the compounds are libtard / trumptard.
I feel like I have probably called someone a "trumpfuck" at least once. Really almost all of them work IMHO: "Shut up, you trump-ass trumpnugget! Take that trumpshit back to /r/trumpstains, you trumpwaffle!" I don't think trumphat or trumpwit really quite have it, though.

Also I feel like this chart is inspiring me to experiment the next time I'm in the kinds of discussion where these compound words get used.

(And also, remember that "trump" is UK for "fart".)

My point was the trump or lib part isn't the pejorative itself, it's the identifier.

Your provided example could be "Shut up, you libfuck, take that libshit back to /r/libcucks, you liblard!

Lib or Trump isn't necessarily pejorative, they may be used as such sometimes, but the words alone aren't always used as a pejorative.

The first word is WHO you are attacking, the second word is HOW you are attacking.

(I'm not British so I can't speak to local usage but I have never seen that usage online)

"Lib" is definitely a pejorative in my experience, fwiw. Nobody who is on the American "left" calls someone a "lib-something".
Trump meaning fart is the mildest slang word, like poo or weewee. It's a common term when talking to small children.

I doubt this is the meaning on Reddit.

> I'm not British so I can't speak to local usage but I have never seen that usage online

It's a _little_ old-fashioned, but in fairly common use. Probably in more common use since the ascension of its namesake; it makes for a particularly obvious joke for comedy writers.

> or trumpwit really quite have it

'trumpwit' is wonderful.

"Look at what you've done, you trumpwit!"

> And also, remember that "trump" is UK for "fart".

:-O

I lived in London for several years and never once did I come across this usage. TIL!

This is what I have been told by some UK folks. I’ve lived in the US my whole life so I can’t confirm this from any experience.
While that's certainly the common case, the heat map suggests that at least some people on reddit are using 'trumpwit' as a pejorative, which I quite like.
I appreciate how quickly it became as a prefix. Really shows the cultural impact.
Disappointed cockwomble isn't in there. It's my go-to.
My personal favorite, 'shitweasel', is completely absent.
If you click through a few links, you get to "shitgibbon" - the word for this class of insults.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shitgibbon

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_shitgibbons

[^] --> Category:Shitgibbons_by_language

[v] --> Category:German_shitgibbons

[v] --> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Arschgeige

“assviolin”

Trumpet seems to be the only musical instrument that's used as a pejorative. Why not "assclarinet" or "drumtwat"? Is it because the trumpet kinda sounds like a fart [full disclosure: trumpet player], and if so why not trombone or tuba, which sound much more like farts to my ear. "Ass-tuba".

On a related note, there was a short-lived punk band in the 1980s called the Butt Trumpets.

My guess is its abundance of plosive consonants as compared to most other instrument names.
Butt Trumpet was also the name of a plugin for back orifice windows trojan from the late 90's... a very memorable name, and custom icon.
Maybe related to Trumpet Winsock?
Was it related to Back Orifice?
Whistle sounds like it could work as well.
"you fartwhistle"

that's excellent

The link above to the definition of shitgibbon specifically says that the second word should be a trochee (first syllable stressed, second unstressed). I do think "tuba" works better than "trombone".

But I also think that consonant clusters probably help. "banjo"? I think homophones probably dilute the effect so "organ", "cymbal" are out.

It took less than a week to Baader-Meinhof on this. Dutch has klootviol, "ballsviolin". But why that particular chordophone in both languages?

How about our Germanic language? "fiddle" is synonymous and has the proper metre. A regex dictionary search finds "bumfiddle(r)", which is only coincidentally close to "assviolin", having come from one of the other senses of "fiddle":

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/294173/what-is-t...

It's because trumpet players are assholes.
Also Dizzie Gillespie’s face at full power.
> Trumpet seems to be the only musical instrument that's used as a pejorative.

It is my pleasure to report from the German language that "Arschtrompete" (literally "Asstrumpet", figuratively "loser") is also at your service.

The shitgibbon definition is surprisingly specific about the metric composition of the pejorative compound, indicating that it must be antibacchic, which means two stressed syllables followed by an unstressed. So "assmonkey" and "twatwaffle" fit the bill, but common forms such as "asshat" and "dickwad" do not.
The article mentions but does further explore the suffix “tard”. In addition to the mentioned “Trumptard” there is also “libtard”.
I'm surprised and a little disappointed that neither 'munch' nor 'muncher' feature anywhere.

Also 'dipboy' is a weird.one. maybe a crypto thing..?

If you're really good friends with a somewhat crude Australian, he might call you a cunt. It's a term of endearment.

But cunt might also be used as a serious insult.

Entirely depends on context.

There's also a creative arabic language insult, or variation on it, that can be translated as "my dick in your religion" or "a thousand dicks in your religion"

depending on the tone, “mate” can be way more aggressive than “cunt”.
"Oi mate. You havin' a good night?"

(This implies that you are not mates, and may in fact be about to start having a not-good night)

Eastern Europeans have some of the best insults, too. Hungarian has "A horse's dick in your ass." (Lófasz a seggedbe.)

I believe it is the Serbs who use "May the Pope fuck your 18th-great-grandmother." (How the Pope shall choose which one of the insultee's 524,288 candidate ancestors, that's not clear.)

The famous "Go fuck yourself" directed at the Russian warship by the Ukrainians translates, literally, even better: иди нахуй (idi nahui) = "go to dick".

there's a Farsi language insult that only women use towards another woman, translates as flat cunt

the flat part is very important and makes it even more aggressive.

literally, kos chapat

the chapat is the same farsi original root word as you'd find in urdu and hindi for a chapati (the flat bread) or anything else that is flat.

> How the Pope shall choose which one of the insultee's [...] 18th-great-grandmother

Interesting question, and I could immediately propose:

-- that the subject ancestor availability on earth is considered a possibility, as they may be implicitly supposed to procreate at first biological occasion;

-- that the identity of said ancestor must crawl the female side of the chain, as "mater semper certa, pater numquam", especially supposedly in the case of the insultee.

Perhaps the Serbian insult is also an accusation that one's family tree is extremely inbred?
It's really more 'go on dick'.
Prepositions are fickle. For example, in Swedish you can learn just 'på' and be fine in 90% of situations. :)
Yes, хуй can also be used with в instead of на, so the ‘on’ is better than ‘to’. However, we could combine the two to be even more accurate and imply the motion: ‘go onto dick’. We can also improve the translation by adding an article: ‘go onto a dick’.

Alternatively, we can make a slightly more idiomatic translation by fiddling a bit with the verb: “get on a dick” is my favourite version of this, conveying the meaning well without sacrificing too much accuracy.

How the Pope shall choose which one of the insultee's 524,288 candidate ancestors, that's not clear.

You make a lot of assumptions about some people's family trees. What if the 17th grandmother is also your 16th grandmother on the other side?

Eg, small village, grandmother has 6 daughters, they have 6 daughters, out of the 36 daughters 20 could be lineage grandmothers.

In fact, the further back you go, the greater chance of overlap.

(Note: growing up in a small town has no bearing on me thinking of this! None!)

I think India does it better— “Go suck/fuck your mom’s/sister’s dick” is about as good as it gets.

Or “your asshole is a fountain” is even better.

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Cunt said with a certain tone to a woman in Australia is still serious business. It depends on context and that’s hard to quantify.
That word is one of very few that I will never say, along with slurs. Just goes to show that dialects are, in fact, a thing.
Surprisingly, fuckfuck and shitshit seem relatively common. Could it be a parsing error?
Fuckfuck is a brainfuck-inspired esolang.

I don't know what shitshit is, although Y Combinator probably funded it if the founders were young enough and seemed to know how to talk to rich people.

Looks to be a common typo when spamming the words. E.g., "Shit shit shitshit shit shit". I wouldn't be surprised if that's the source of many of those.
Most likely, yes. Still I'd expect those to be filtered out with a heuristic.
But then how do we explain “assass”? I can’t imagine any situation where one wants to spam “ass” repeatedly.

Or maybe it’s just me not knowing Reddit.

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I read a comment the other day that referred to oversized american SUVs as wankpanzers. Love it.
Or wankwagons.
Wankbasket is pretty solid. It has internal vowel harmony.
It's not uniquely American. In Germany, they're referred to as hausfrauenpanzers, or house wife panzers.
That would be perfect for a driver of a Land Rover Defender.
The, um "stereotypical demographic" for Defender ownership has moved to Japanese products over the last 20yr.
In Mexico we call them "Mamamóvil" (Mommobile), as parody of the Batmobile.
I wonder if we got that to go viral in the US if it would have any impact on SUV popularity.
I feel like wankerpanzer sounds a little bit better ... wankpanzer makes me think of a special tank you enter to jerk off.
Following the link for “wankpuffin” (beautiful word, btw), apparently the one-syllable followed by two-syllable construction is a distinct pattern, called a “shitgibbon” (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shitgibbon)

Noun shitgibbon (plural shitgibbons)

2. (linguistics) A type of antibacchic compound word used as an insult, consisting of a single-syllable expletive, followed by an absurd or innocuous two-syllable noun as a trochee.

Also,

> a special tank you enter to jerk off.

feels rather insulting to me. It’s not exactly something I would want to be associated with.

In Melbourne, Australia we sometimes refer to them as "Toorak Tractors" as Toorak is considered a suburb of Melbourne mostly populated with people that have more money than brains.
'Chelsea Tractor' in the UK (esp. London) similarly - Range Rovers and the like that never make it off (predominantly metropolitan) paved roads.
yanktanks
Yanktanks predate SUVs. It refers to simply the big American cars.
While true, it seem it still applies to SUVs. The Porsche Cayenne is big. The Silverado/Dodge RAM trucks are bloody stupid big : a combination of SUV and Yanktank.

The mind boggles when people go to a "support the environment" rally and then jump in these to go home...

I know it is predominantly Industry we need to look at regards environmental damage but personal responsibility has to step in somewhere.

Ironic if it's better than wanktank.
I guess my unpopular opinion is that most of these sound pretty dumb, I personally prefer the ones like “shitdick”
Methinks the point is for them to sound as dumb as possible.
They annoy me slightly, I think the reason is people clearly put effort into coming up with "hilarious" combinations and then try to pass them off as a spontaneous product of their strong feelings. The real internal response was probably a boring combination of the same old words and maybe some now banned ones from school you can't fully shake.

It's like the tumblr trend of suddenly switching to caps partway through a word, the verbal equivalent works but I know you're proofreading your posts.

I haven't heard that term used since Richard Cheese sang a parody song with that title on the Opie & Anthony show over 15 years ago. Not linking it here since the song is extremely offensive but YouTube is your friend.
Just a headsup, but shitdick may come off as homophobic depending on who you release your shitgibbon on
Thanks for the info, I had no idea
maybe, or maybe it refers to someone having defeated on their own genitals
Yeah. Because if I think shitdick is gross, there's apparently something wrong with me. What a crazy world we live in.
No, that's not how it works. The comment is only asking you that "please don't use that swearword, it sounds like you're cursing at gays".
Almost all people do not like feces on their penis, regardless of their sexual orientation.
why are there so many puffins anyway, you would think there might be an ostrich or two, or maybe a swan, wankswan - the real ugly duckling.
Careful with using these terms on reddit as reddit is increasingly moving to machine learning based distribution of bans and post removals, use of any obscure words (particularly pejoratives) is more likely to get a ban from our humorless machine overlords.

(meanwhile, hacked nudes and posts of judges home addresses with 'violence isn't the answer. it's the question and the answer is yes' "doesn’t violate Reddit’s Content Policy")

I have in the past been told that overt calls for racial genocide do not violate Reddit's content policy.

It is taking time but I'm trying to find replacements for reddit that either don't pretend to be moderated or are anti-crimes against humanity in their moderation.

That explicitly depends on which race.
> use of any obscure words

It even doesn't need to be an obscure one, it just can be "not PC enough".

Can you guess what word got my post shadowbanned from r/powershell?

Thanks to this, I'm going spend literally an hour trying to figure out the rarest of these I've actually used. I'll be shocked if I don't score at least one single-digit.

I have a couple guesses as to what it would be, but don't want to dox myself, because they're usages that are still in the early stages of catching on.

Weirdly, neither 'jesus' nor 'christ' appears in this list. While reddit's obviously hugely popular internationally, I'm assuming there's some North-American cultural impositions, de facto or de jure, in play. In my small circle there's a lot of compound expletives that include one or the other.

We can trace back some common expressions of surprise or frustration to this character's name / title - crikey, jeepers, gee, I'm sure there's more - but I suppose those are both sufficiently linguistically distanced to be safe, and in the context of TFA somewhat anachronistic.

Maybe the author just didn't want to go there. Like they avoided racist terms. But seemed ok with homophobic and sexist ones.
I rarely see either of these in compound swears. Could you share some examples of these with some kind of context?

I mean I see things like "sweet monkey jesus" but I never see "shitchrist", y'know?

Many years ago in high school a friend came up with “Jesus godfuck.” That one stuck with me.
On reflection nothing as sophisticated or delicious as two of my favourites -- twatwaffle or cockwomble (only the former got a mention in TFA). Typically it'd be Jesus followed by one of the stronger profanities - especially that one that Americans seem to be surprisingly sensitive about, but which Australians will exuberantly drop on a whim.

To wit - while the f-word appears ~ 14 times in the article, the c-word is notably absent. (EDIT: actually it's there, once, in a PNG, which is why it didn't come up on page-search.)

Referring to TFA's matrix, it looks like only a handful of potentially comfortable combinations that could use this fictional character's name against the suffixes and prefixes they've identified -- but they would feel a bit contrived.

Is dickjesus even pejorative?
Back in the 80s, a book was passed around the office that listed Japanese swear words and insults. Their take on insults was very creative and funny. Naturally, we all used them on each other, until management finally stepped in to put a stop to it. I've looked for the book since, but cannot find it.

On an unrelated note, when I was working on the C++ compiler back then, Zortech C++ had the option of presenting error messages in Japanese. There weren't many obvious Japanese translations for technical terms. C++ "destructors" in Japanese turned into "death tractors".

Sometimes I still get caught referring to destructors as death tractors.

Japanese profanity is difficult to translate literally. For example, there are verbs that encode grades of respect ("to eat" can be any of meshiagaru, taberu, kuu) plus verb conjugations that express contempt (yaru > yagare), so you end up with phrases like kuiyagare that on a literal level mean "eat" but would need to be translated "Fucking eat!".

In the other direction, you can't map English cursing word by word either. "Asshole" may be ketsu no ana, but the listener would hear that as "buttocks opening", not a personal insult. Which is not to say there aren't scatological insults in Japanese, kusottare (lit. shit-dripper) being a personal favorite.

More on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_profanity

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The normal Japanese word for a programming destructor is still just English-borrowed "desutorakuta," so the legacy of the death tractor lives on.

Here's a very similar online conversation which you were a part of on the D forums/newsgroup, about a D book being published in Japan. [1] That's page 2 where it's first mentioned, and your joyous reaction is on page 3.

Seems like at the time since Google Translate didn't know the term in its programming context it tried its best and gave back "death tractor" when trying to take "desutorakuta" back to English. Today though it gets it right (see "table of contents" tab in this link) [2].

That thread so matches what you're describing here, I wonder if it's the actual source?

[1] https://forum.dlang.org/thread/cpm7i4$ub1$1@digitaldaemon.co... [2] https://gihyo-jp.translate.goog/book/2005/4-7741-2208-4/?_x_...

Google translate wasn't available in the 1980s, so no.

But "death tractors" just never gets old.

Ha, well sure, with Google itself not existing for another decade or so, I would have to agree with you there.

My suggestion was rather that this 2004 event was actually when you first encountered the "death tractor" round-trip translation, not in the 80s. I won't belabor the point since obviously you would know much better than I would.

I just found it amusing to find such an exactly matching thread, still easily accessible. And as you say, "death tractor" is good in any decade.