<<<At least be relevant in your insults.>>>
You are right. I am not good at this. But help is on the way <g>:
SNUBS, sneers, slights, and effronteries - you have all of them in a compilation of Samuel Johnson's Insults edited by Jack Lynch (www.walkerbooks.com) . "The Age of Johnson was an age of insults. Never has abuse been served up with more zest than in the eighteenth century," informs the intro. These days are tamer, may be because we aren't that hopeful of change!
Those were the days when verbal assaults were to be responded to. For instance, the book narrates how when a writer didn't respond well to criticism, Johnson said, "I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark."
Abuse is often a service, according to Mr Turbulent, as Johnson was at times called. "There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence; his name, like a shuttlecock, must be beat backward and forward, or it falls to the ground."
The man who was known to knock one down with the butt end if his pistol missed fire, laughed `like a rhinoceros', and had a prodigious sense of humour, writes Lynch.
The book is a collection of `more than 300 of the most delightfully malicious vituperations' drawn from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1755. "When you can't think of something nice to say, let Samuel Johnson help you elevate the insult to an art form," teases the back cover.
Johnson used to mind his belly `very studiously', so much so "a particularly rotten dinner at a nobleman's house prompted him to say of the cook, `I'd throw such a rascal into the river'."
To him, actors were `talentless buffoons'! He saw them "as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint-stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs".
Aren't some players better than others? When this question was posed to him, Johnson snapped: "Yes, Sir, as some dogs dance better than others". Johnson enjoyed skewering the empty-headed, notes Lynch. "On meeting `a dull tiresome fellow,' he described him thus: `That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.'"
Lynch's lexicon of abuse, `from abbey-lubber to zany', includes some of the quotations that Johnson had added in his Dictionary `to illustrate the way the words were used'.
For example, `conceitless', meaning `stupid; without thought; dull of apprehension', is explained with the help of a snatch from the Bard's play The Two Gentlemen of Verona: "Think'st thou, I am so shallow, so conceitless, to be seduced by thy flattery."
From the compendium, you may pick up `bad' words such as: fopdoodle (a fool); giddybrained (careless, thoughtless); jobbernowl (blockhead); linseywoolsey (vile, mean); malversation (mean artifices, wicked and fraudulent tricks); pickthank (an officious fellow who does what he is not desired, a whispering parasite); and sophister (an artful but insidious logician).
A word that earned Johnson much protest was `oats'. He had defined it as "a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Soctland supports the people."
The next entry is `patriot', where Lynch cites the popular quote of the `master of insults': "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Or, is it the first, one commentator had wondered!
Next is `patron', defined thus: "Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery."
Lynch traces `the animosity behind this definition' in the spat with a possible patron Lord Chesterfield that preceded the publication of the Dictionary. The Lord had given but ten pounds in return for the prospect of a dedication!
A book worth consulting if insults worry you, because the dictum is simple: `Better abused than forgotten'. |
