My blogging vocabulary has been immeasurably enrichedtoday, thanks to Grauniad commenter AllyF:
AllyF
Comment No. 1240032
April 1 16:21
GBROooh, brilliant. I’ve just found online the famous passage from 1653 (well done Ariane) from Thomas Urquart’s translation of Rabelais, where I first encountered the word slubberdegullion:
“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, slapsauce fellows, slubberdegullion 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;”
————It’s remarkably like a George Galloway speech, come to think of it.
It’s hard to choose a favourite defamatory epithet from that comprehensive list. Every single one seems ready-minted for current political use; for instance, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith just is a ninny-hammer flycatcher; you only have to see her speak to see it.
Gordon Brown is definitely a blockish grutnol. Or perhaps a codshead loobie; yet somehow, magically at one and the same time he also manages to be a flouting milksop and a turdy gut. Is there no end to the multifacetedness of the Dear Leader’s fascinating personality?
As for London Mayoral wannabe Boris Johnson, nothing but doddipol-jolthead will do. Actually you can reduce the whole mayoral election to a race between a cozening fox, a doddipol-jolthead, a drowsy loiterer and a grouthead gnat-snapper. You choose which is which, hours of fun for all the family.
I’m all for bringing a bit of 17th century language into today’s political discourse: I’d especially love to see what the political writers of yesterday would’ve made of the blogosphere. Imagine Voltaire or Tom Paine* laying waste to the comments section at Little Green Footballs.
For imaginative exuberance alone it’d certainly entertain more than the vulgar, unimaginative effing and blinding that passes for insult these days.
[Yes, I know they’re 18thC, but I’d still like to see it.]
