If you happen to be thinking about calling someone an insulting name, I have two things to say to you. First, it’s not a good idea to insult someone, and you shouldn’t do it. Second, if after having read the previous sentence you still have the urge to call someone an offensive name, this is your lucky day.
That’s because today’s column is full of old-fashioned put-downs that are guaranteed to make you wildly unpopular should you have the bad taste to use them, you mumpsimus. And there seems to be no end to the groups of people who – deservedly or not – can end up in the crosshairs of these antique potshots.
And yes, one of those groups is writers. Over the years we’ve been called everything from “puffers” (especially those writers who are routinely accused of spreading malarky – advertising writers) to “tootlers,” whom the Oxford English Dictionary define as writers “of ‘tootle,’ verbiage or twaddle.”
A couple of vintage words that hit a little close to home are “quill-driver” (today’s “pencil pusher”) and “squibbler,” or a writer who quibbles in an “endless stream of pretentious think pieces” that he writes (probably for the Sunday’s paper. Ouch).
Lazy people merit their own special insults, such as being called an “afternoon farmer,” a person who misses opportunities by rising late and being behind in his chores. It was at this point that my German friend, Claus (who’d been sitting across the table and trying desperately to not insult me), chimed in.
“In Germany we would call that guy a ‘dünnbrettboher,’” he said, “‘a driller of thin planks’ who does as little as possible and always takes the easy way out.”
“OK, that covers lazy people,” I said, “how about someone you think is just plain dumb? I’ve got ‘blunderbuss,’ which is not only a short gun but also a dumb, blundering fellow, and ‘nincompoop,’ someone who’s just plain foolish.”
“I know that in England they call a very stupid person a ‘pillock,’” Claus instructed. “In Germany such a dimwit is referred to as an ‘einzeller,’ or ‘a single-cell organism.’”
“Speaking of single-cell organisms, how about unscrupulous professionals?” I said. “An attorney who’s a real shyster used to be known as a ‘pettifogger’ or literally ‘a small lawyer’ whose methods were underhanded or disreputable.”
“In German he’d probably be called a ‘schweinhund,’” said Claus, “or literally a combination of a pig and a dog.”
“And the same for a ‘saltimbanco,’ a snake-oil salesman who sells quack remedies from his soapbox?” I asked.
“Correct,” Claus confirmed. “But those guys aren’t the only ones who talk too much. There was a fellow back home who was a real chatterbox. He talked so much that everybody in town called him a ‘heißluftgebläse,’ which translates to ‘hot air gun.’”
“Well, talkative people are bad enough, but what really raises my hackles are the ones that are always critical of everything,” I replied.
“Oh, an ‘erbsenzähler,’” Claus interjected, “that’s a ‘pea counter’ who obsesses over little details.”
“I was thinking of a couple other words,” I replied. “One is the ‘grumbletonian,’ who’s always railing at the times. The other would be ‘smellfungus,’ you know, that person who’s excessively fault-finding in general.”
Oh, and as for “mumpsimus,” that name I mentioned if you still wanted to hurl insults at others? According to Merriam-Webster, it pertains to a priest who’d been told he’d accidentally said “mumpsimus” instead of “sumpsimus” (“we have taken” in Latin) but continued to say “mumpsimus” anyway.
The word describes “a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong.” Seems like there are a lot of those people these days.
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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