Pardon my French: after (allegedly)
showing up drunk at the G8 (
Mefi),
walking out from 60 minutes, and
almost getting in a fight with angry fishermen (
translation), French President Sarkozy, while visiting the Paris International Agricultural Show, snaps at a man who refused to shake his hand "
Casse-toi pauvre con".
But what exactly
does this
mean in
English? He hasn't (yet) slapped a kid,
unlike his presidential rival Bayrou, but he's still not in the same league as De Gaulle, who answered to a heckler shouting "Mort aux cons!" ("Death to the idiots!") the sublime "
Vaste programme, en effet" ("Tall order, indeed").
posted by elgilito
on Feb 25, 2008 -
57 comments
Racial Slurs have been around for centuries, and this website attempts to collect them all (2,295 so far) and explain their origins. May not be SFW if someone is reading over your shoulder.
posted by whoshotwho
on May 27, 2004 -
18 comments
Shut Up! Due to a linguistic phenomenon called
amelioration, we're losing a lot of those nice, bad words that are so useful for expressing anger.
Nice once meant
stupid and
bad's
good today. "
Shut up!" increasingly means an affectionate "
Get outta here!";
No is becoming
Yes and even "
Fuck off!", with the right intonation can mean something like "
I don't believe it! How very interesting, Carruthers!" Where will it end? And it's not as if any good words are making the opposite journey, except perhaps "
You can kiss my ass", which is easily imagined as a term of endearment back in old Babylon. What
really bad words and expressions will survive the
nicification onslaught? And what unnecessary good words could be put to better use as insults?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on May 8, 2003 -
54 comments
Playground law - a comprehensive (warning: pun) list of school yard insults. Beware - it sucks you in, I've been reading for an hour and I'm only on 'c'.
posted by Orange Goblin
on Jan 16, 2003 -
9 comments
slurdb an interesting look into an often overlooked and ignored lexicon - even if it is an ugly one. jtx from
hatesville is building a reference to the language of hate, but he needs your help.
posted by boogah
on Feb 24, 2002 -
6 comments
Children can be cruel and remarkably inventive with it, as this directory of playground insults shows. It's the personal remiscences which explain each insult that make it worthwhile.
posted by MUD
on Jan 30, 2002 -
20 comments
The Second Reincarnation of the Final Grandson of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. For those of us in constant search of universally meaningful insults, wowbagger delivers.
The program is based on a character in Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", a character who, after an incident involving a time traveling machine and a piece of elastic band, became so pissed off at the universe that he sought to insult every creature in it, in alphabetical order.
posted by samsara
on Mar 15, 2001 -
5 comments
