Insult Intensifications

The purpose of this essay is to examine four or five words that not only were insults in a former period but which added suffixes or other endings to them to become more intense insults in our contemporary period. Here are six examples that come to mind (there may be others). Wackie (1935) became intensified through wacko (1977); weirdie (1894) through weirdo (1955); jerk (1935) through jerk-off (1968); dip (1932) through dipshit (1963); goof (1916) through goofball (1938 and 1959); and, most significantly f....er (16th century) through motherf....ing (1889) and motherf...er (1918). I want to hasten to add that I have never used ellipses (...), indicating I wasn't going to spell out a word, on this site to date, believing that most people who run across these essays are mature adults, but even I am reticent to fill in the word appropriately. Sorry for my reluctance. If you need for me to spell the word out to you, send me an email! I only have time to focus on three of these here.

From Jerk (1935) to Jerk-off (1968)

As we have already seen, jerk was a word going back to the 16th century to express a sudden movement, but became associated with a foolish person in 1935. In that year A J Pollock, in Underworld Speaks defined a jerk as a boob, a sucker, a chump. But, you might say, "Underworld Speaks"? Is that where the word first found its play? It probably wasn't limited to that area of life, though it was a term not used in polite circles. How times have changed. Today, "jerk" is a rather commonplace expression for almost anyone you disagree with or who has done something stupid.

More intersting to me, however, is the way that jerk became jerk-off. Well, to be clear, the first attestation of the latter term was in the 1950s, referring to masturbatory activity. Perhaps not surprisingly, Norman Mailer first used the term this way: "They turn their backs..on..the grandeurs of the past, restrict their horizon to..tripe..jazz magazines and jerk-off magazines." By 1968, however, we have jerk-off used as a noun. But it's first usage is rather tame. From Current Slang (1968-70) we have, "Jerk off, .. a rustic, a simpleton." But by 1972 it means the same thing as "jerk": "I'm sitting here alone...feeling like the biggest jerk-off in the history of the world." And, from Wilson's 1972 Playboy's Book of Forbidden Words, we have the following: "A jerk or jerk-off is a fool." Couldn't be more clear. Thus, we have an evolution of the insult word, even though it means the same thing as the earlier and shorter term.

From Goof (1916) to Goofball (1938 and 1959)

I have two dates after the word "goofball" because it changed its meaning during those 21 years so that it became synonymous with the pre-1938 meaning of "goof." The word "goof" is first attested in the Saturday Evening Post from 1916 to mean a silly, stupid or 'daft' person: "It ain't the same show, you goof!...They change the bill every day." By 1925 an author could say: "The most idiotic, dunce-like goof that ever struggled about on four legs. A goof would later (1955) become a mistake or gaffe, but it started out in reference to a person. The OED thinks that goof is derived from goff, which goes back to 1570 to mean "a foole, morio, bardus." A goff was a "foolish clown" according to a 1790 definition. I am sure there were fools well before we called them "goffs."

When goofball was first used in 1938, however, it referred not to a person but rather to a drug or pill or something such as marijuana that would render one, well, goofy. Goofy goes back to 1921 to mean "stupid, silly, daft," so I am not making up words... Actually, the word goofus emerged the year after goof (1917) in the following lines: "Here to the right is happy Joe Goofus, Smies in his heart and smiles on his face,...He laughs till he crumples up flat on his back." The identification of goofball with a barbiturate continued well into the Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac, in his famous On the Road (1957) could say, "She took tea, goofballs, benny." But then, in 1959, things changed. Goofball became associated not with the pill that was taken but the person taking the pill. "San Francisco, which is 'already a haven for wandering psychotics and goofballs of every description.'" The rest, as they say, is history, and goofballs are now all around us.

From F...er (??) to Motherf...er (1918)

It is hard to say how far the term f...er goes back. A book entitled Worlde of Wordes (1598) has "Fottitore, a iaper, a sarder, a swiver, a f...er, an occupier." Fottitore is the Italian term for f...er. But the next reference to it, at least in the OED (the refined Century Dictionary doesn't list it) comes from 1893, where it is used as "a lover. A term of endearment, admiration, derision, etc.." Really? Well, if this was the case in 1893, by the time James Joyce penned Ulysses (1922), things were different: "I'll wring the bastard f..er's bleeding blasted f...ing windpipe!"

Perhaps the meaning of f....had become more "focused," we may say because of the onslaught of two new terms, motherf...ing and motherf...er. The former is defined as someone who is "despicable, obnoxious, contemptible, damnable." You get the idea. But the earliest attestations are in a legal context. From 1889 we have "According to Sumner, he spoke of defendant as 'that God damned lying, thieving, son-of-a-bitch';...and according to McKinney, as 'that God damned mother-f...cking, bastardly son-of a bitch." Just to show you that TX eloquence was not a one-time event, the Texas Reporters have the following from 1898: "You are instructed, that if prior to the shooting of deceased by defendant, the deceased called the defendant a 'mother-f..ing son-of-a-bitch', and the defendant..shot and killed the deceased, then you are instructed, in such a case, the defendant could not be guilty of a higher offense than manslaughter, if guilty of anything."

I think this last legal quotation is very significant for it shows that the word motherf...ing was so incendiary at the time that it could be used as what we lawyer call evidence of mitigation of the harshness of a sentence. It is equivalent to the deceased having done something to provoke the attack. Interesting.

Finally, the word motherf...er first was used in 1918. I don't have to give you a citation to prove it. This word, however, was called "the superlatively derogotary colloquial epithet" in 1941. Certainly it intensified the rather "mild" f...er. Interesting it is also that motherf....er is, if not benign today, not as shocking an epithet as the Texas Courts found it to be more than 100 years ago. I wonder if we have anything that would be its modern equivalent. Maybe saying "I'm a Democrat" in certain "Red" counties?

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